Seminar: "Angels Tapping at the Wine Shop's Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East" by Rudolph Matthee
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Rudolph Matthee, John A. Munroe and Dorothy L. Munroe Chair of History, University of Delaware
This book [presentation] debunks the myth that, since alcohol is forbidden in Islam, “good” Muslims do not drink. It argues that, rather than extraneous to Islam, alcohol is integral to the faith, present through its very presumed absence. It presents traditional Islam, heir to a variegated Byzantine-Christian and Persian-Zoroastrian vinous tradition, not as the pettifogging creed that it appears to be today, but as a capacious faith that accommodated alcohol consumption as the privilege of youth and the prerogative of royalty, enabling the sin of drinking to be expiated through repentance, and conniving at the drinking of commoners so long as it did not disturb the social order.