What This Medieval Wine Jug Can Tell Us About Islam | Hacker News Reader

What This Medieval Wine Jug Can Tell Us About Islam

prospectmagazine.co.uk

26 pointsThevet15 comments

The OP has fallen into the common trap of applying the Christian concept of sin to the Islamic context. Christianity is generally a binary system of sins. Things are forbidden or they are not. Islamic is full of more subtle interpretations. Things are good and bad, some worse or better than others. This allows for contradictions, such as an Islamic wine jug. I chalk this up to how the hadith were compiled.

This medieval jug can also no more tell us about "Islam" than a pot from 13th century Ireland can tell us about Lutheranism . At best they are tiny snapshots within an epic history.

The jug can at least tell us "people sometimes wrote things about Allah on jugs like this". Your Irish pot predates Lutheranism by three centuries.

It can tell us about different "Islams" at different times and places. It's analogous to studying clerical marriage in the Medieval Western Church.

> I chalk this up to how the hadith were compiled.

What do you mean?

>> Each hadith is based on two parts, a chain of narrators reporting the hadith (isnad), and the text itself (matn). Individual hadith are classified by Muslim clerics and jurists as sahih ("authentic"), hasan ("good") or da'if ("weak"). However, there is no overall agreement: different groups and different individual scholars may classify a hadith differently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith

The result is a very large body of knowledge, on the order of 10k, some accepted as trustworthy and others not. The Christian tradition has seen various books included or excluded from the bible, with anything not making the cut deemed heretical. Everything included became sacrosanct and above debate. The more varied approach applied to hadith spills over into Islamic culture, especially law. Arguably, current Islamic extremist movements are a fusion of Islamic rules interpreted through a very Christian mindset: in or out, forbidden or not, with little room for debate. They focus only on the Koran, as Christians historically focused only on the bible.

That's an important difference. Christians believe good is from God and evil is from Satan. (Forgive me if I'm mistaken, I know that's a gross oversimplification.) Muslims believe good and evil are both creations of God. So most things have both good and evil in them, including alcohol:

They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, "In them is great sin and [yet, some] benefit for people. But their sin is greater than their benefit."

-- 2:219 http://quran.com/2/219

Keep in mind that the Quran was revealed piece by piece over two decades. The later parts add to the earlier parts. That can be a source of ambiguity to Western readers (not to mention that the chapters are not in chronological order), which is why it's important to understand it as a whole rather than its individual verses or chapters.

Careful. Two or more people agreeing on Islam in a positive way probably triggers a MIB bot. And I've got a flight in a couple hours.

"The Rubaiyat" [1] by Omar Khayyam [2] has numerable references to wine.

Omar Khayyam was one of the great Islamic Scientist-Scholars and a famed son of Khorasan.

[1] http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html

[2] http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/‘umar-al-khayyam-omar-...

Khayyam was also a skeptic and had very hostile attitudes to all religions at various times. Very, very far from being orthodox in any sense.

And very, very far from being supported by the Islamic clergy of today.

Khayyam died in 12th century. What's with some nine hundred years afterwards? What's with the state today with to which we have to know? Whoever wants to argue what "Islam is" must observe what the clergy and "the learned" promote today and since oil rich countries started to pump their money all through the world (billions and billions), hijabs, jihad and sharia are more popular than ever. The ideal becomes exactly a country like Saudi Arabia with prohibition, beheadings and hand cutting. Because they are the most capable in spreading their values, and they do support their values with the quotes from the holy texts. You can't "catch them" in "misquoting."

That's the dangerous development, compared with what was common in a lot of mostly Muslim countries until just some decades ago. And also the role of the US in that development is far from positive (as documented by the Washington Post):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08...

"The Taliban indoctrinates kids with jihadist textbooks paid for by the U.S."

And nobody should pretend all this doesn't exist. Especially not based on what was centuries ago: we have to take the stance to what is happening now.

Anyway, Omar Khayyam was a fantastic poet. Absolutely joy to read, but don't expect that many of those who are religious today would share his views.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history

Pfft. Islam is way broader than medieval Iran, but even in medieval Iran people were good at wine. Hopefully this article does bust some really ignorant stereotypes, but it doesn't go far enough. Shiraz, anyone?

A medieval camel found in Austria will tell you more about Islam. It came to it's present location when Islam almost conquered Europe.. for the second time.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/europe/austria-camel-ottoman/i...

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