Latest Updates: alcohol RSS

  • johnpi 8:48 am on October 31, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, , , , halal collagen, , halal non-alcoholic beer, , halal vinegar, ,

    Malaysia hopes to create world halal standard.

    “Malaysia’s halal certification is recognized worldwide so perhaps we can play an important role in creating a global standard,” Malaysia’s religious affairs minister Jamil Khir Baharom said in an interview on Thursday. “We need a halal certification that everyone can use easily.”

    The halal industry is based on a belief that Muslims should eat food and use goods such as cosmetics that are ‘halalan toyibban’, which means permissible and wholesome.

    But Muslim jurists do not always agree on what is halal. Islam prohibits the consumption of pork and prescribes how animals must be slaughtered, but there has been debate on the acceptability of non-alcoholic beer, collagen and vinegar.

    Rules are interpreted and enforced more strictly in some countries. Sudanese authorities have hauled up women for wearing trousers and a Malaysian woman has been sentenced to a beating for drinking beer, practices which are acceptable in some Muslim countries.

     

  • johnpi 5:33 am on August 27, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol,

    Muslims prohibited from attending Malaysia Black Eyed Peas concert.

    Muslims in Malaysia have been barred from attending a concert by U.S. hip hop band the Black Eyed Peas sponsored by Guinness which is owned by the world’s biggest spirits group Diageo.

    The problem is with the sponsor, not the band apparently.

     

  • johnpi 6:43 pm on August 26, 2009 | 15 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, ,

    The model sentenced to be caned could deflect unwelcome international publicity if she appeals her sentence. The Malaysian prime minister has dropped hints, but generally looks powerless as she refuses and demands her punishment.

    As Kartika awaits her punishment, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke out on Tuesday, advising her to appeal her sentence. Kartika’s case has sparked global condemnation, and presumably Najib would prefer not to deal with any body blows to Malaysia’s international status. “I believe the authorities concerned are sensitive on this matter and realize the implications of this case,” he said at a press conference. “I feel the person concerned should appeal to the state authorities and not be so willing to accept the punishment.”
    ….

    Perhaps fearing a backlash from Islamic officials, Kartika lodged a police report on Monday saying she is not a party to the decision to postpone the caning. “We don’t want to be blamed later,” she said, “[by people who might say]that we had avoided punishment and embarrassed Islam.”

     

  • johnpi 4:55 pm on August 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, , ,

    Moderate Malaysia’s image bruised over beer caning.

    The case of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a former model and nurse, drew the attention of international media and rights groups and presented a harsh view of the kind of Islamic justice dispensed in one of the world’s most moderate and stable Muslim-majority countries.

    “It is pretty embarrassing,” Marina Mahathir, a leading women’s activist and the daughter of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, told The Associated Press in an interview.

    Kartika was charged with violating a law prohibiting Muslims from drinking alcohol. Marina said it raised a key question about how Islamic laws are applied in Malaysia. “Are they working to dispense justice or to provide moral lessons for the rest of us?” she said.

    Malaysia follows a dual-track justice system. Shariah laws apply to Muslims, who make up about 60 percent of the 27 million population, in all personal matters. Non-Muslims — the Chinese, Indian, Sikh and other minorities — are covered by civil laws, and are free to drink.

    Often the two sets of laws collide and the winner usually is the Islamic system. For example, a Muslim who converts from Islam is guilty of apostasy under Shariah laws — punishable by jail and fine — even though freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution.

     

  • thabet 12:41 am on August 24, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, , ,

    Malaysian model will not be caned:

    Islamic officials today abruptly released a Muslim model scheduled to be caned this week for drinking beer after briefly detaining her, in an unexpected twist for the first woman to face the corporal punishment in Malaysia.

    Earlier today three officials travelled to the house of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno in northern Malaysia and took her away in a van for what was supposed to be a four-hour road journey to a prison near the capital of Kuala Lumpur.

    But they returned after about 30 minutes and said they had received “instructions from the higher powers” to release her, said Ms Kartika’s father, Shukarno Abdul Muttalib. He added that the officials had told him that “for now, the sentence cannot be carried out”.

     

  • johnpi 5:56 am on August 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, corporal punishment,

    Malaysia model to be caned for drinking alcohol requests to receive punishment in public “to send a clear message to Muslims that they should shun alcohol.” Authorities refused, citing official policy.

     

  • johnpi 8:26 pm on July 29, 2009 | 10 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, , ,

    Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf rebuts the Shariah court that sentenced a Malaysian woman to a whipping with fines for alcohol consumption:

    I would urge the Malaysian Syariah authorities to seriously reconsider the Syariah basis of this law on the following Syariah grounds:

    Neither the Quran nor the Hadith invokes a penalty for alcohol consumption. The sin of consuming alcohol is described in the Quran in the mildest language of prohibition.

    When it comes to dietary laws, the Quran commands the believers in Sura 5:3: “forbidden (hurrimat) to you is the dead animal, loose blood, and the flesh of the pig”.

    The 90th verse of the same Sura cautions the believers that “wine, gambling, etc, are an impurity so avoid them (fa-jtanibuh)”.

    Some legal scholars suggest that the divine command ijtinab, to avoid something, is milder language than tahrim, prohibition.

    A Muslim consuming a glass of wine with a pork chop commits a more serious offence in eating pork; yet as there is no Quran or Hadith penalty for consuming pork, there is also none for alcohol consumption.

    The imam goes on to explain the punishment comes from the time of Caliph Umar when a committee was convened to decided what to do with a drunk man who wandered around in te evening yelling slanderous comments in the streets of Madina. the sentence of 80 lashes was eventually leveled against the man – the sentence for slander.

    Since that time, this has been considered the maximum penalty for alcohol consumption, based on utilising the Syariah concept of ta`zir (deterrence).

    I disagree with this being the mandatory sentence for the offence of wine consumption, because it is the maximum sentence for another, separate offence – slander – albeit committed under the influence of alcohol.

    Had the man just fallen on the street in a stupor and suffered a terrible hangover without having hurt anyone, no punishment would have been established.

     

  • johnpi 5:35 am on July 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, ,

    In Malaysia, Muslim model to be caned for drinking a beer in a club.

    The woman will appeal.

    Malaysia, which has large Indian and Chinese minorities freely enjoying alcohol, has a two-track legal system. Civil courts operate alongside state-based sharia courts, which can try Muslims for religious offences.

     

  • johnpi 5:25 am on April 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, , , , , , , , vice

    Trends and developments in Iraqi society based of the various story lines that bloggers, advocates and journalists (with or without a political axe to grind) are promoting. Here are a few:

    1. Iraq as a land of fallen, formerly well-off middle-class educated people now degraded and run down by cruel invaders, as in this story or at this blog.

    2. Iraq as the land of newly inflamed extremists afflicting the vulnerable and defenseless as in stories such as this and this.

    3. Iraq – especially Baghdad – returning to its true character as ’sin city,’ as in this story today from the NY Times/International Herald Tribune:

    BAGHDAD – Vice is making a comeback in this city once famous for 1,001 varieties of it.

     

  • razib, murtad fitri 1:32 pm on March 2, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol

    from the report, more than zero days of alcohol consumption by religious group:
    muslims 14%
    protestants 20%
    catholic 28%
    mormons 8%
    jews 21%
    american population general 24%

    UPDATE: error on my part, zero days in the past week. IOW, 14% of muslims have had at least 1 drink in the past week.

    UPDATE II: ok, error II. this is a measure of *binge* drinking. 4-5 drinks in one setting.

     

  • razib, murtad fitri 2:52 pm on July 3, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alcohol, religion as a natural phenomenon

    page 141 of A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind
    Alcohol seems to have played a significant part in the poor showing of later Safavid monarchs. From the time of Shah Esma’il and before, drinking sessions had been a part of the group rituals of the Qezelbash [religious order which conquered iran under shah esmai'l], building probably on the ancient practices of the Mongols and the Turkic tribes in Central Asia, but also on ghuluww Sufi practice and the Persian tradition of razm o bazm – fighting and feasting….

    when i was younger i had a rather simple view of religion. in short, i viewed religion as the straightforward working out of inferences from axioms of belief. when i would read about things like this my own assumption was that this was just deviation from ‘correct’ inferences.

    in hindsight i think i turned religion simply into an inverse of my atheism, a spare set of assertions about the nature of the world as an objective entity. today i think i truly did not understand how religion was lived, in large part because i have never evinced much interest in the religious sensibility myself. instead of a mathematical formalism i now believe that religion as it is lived resembles art more than a science. this does not mean that i do not believe it is futile to analyze religion as a natural phenomenon, but art is a very difficult thing to get a tractable grasp on….

     

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
esc
cancel