Download or read book The Rhetoric of Sobriety written by Kathryn M. Kueny and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2001-07-26 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does Islam condemn wine and other alcoholic beverages? The complexity behind this simple question is examined in The Rhetoric of Sobriety. Drawing on an array of revelatory, legal, historical, and exegetical materials (both Sunni and Shi'ite) from the early Islamic period, and contrasting them with comparable Judaic and Christian works from the same era, the author analyzes the rhetoric used to establish the proper authoritative boundaries that would contain wine's ambiguous nature. How believers chose to identify wine as a marginal substance and assert its prohibition offers a rare glimpse into the underlying intellectual strategies of early Muslim thought to resolve conflict, create meaning, structure the world, govern human behavior, and convey the divine message. Ultimately, this examination reveals some of the ways in which the early Islamic community created its identity, and asserted it over other confessional groups with similar convictions.