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13 Christians “Adhere to God’s Book,” but Muslims “Judaize” Islamic and Christian Classifications of One Another The Qur’an’s prohibition against consuming blood, carrion, pork, and that over which a name other than God’s has been invoked came to pose a significant challenge , albeit for very different reasons, to both Sunni and Latin Christian systems for classifying humanity. Latin Christians reject observance of ingredient-based dietary law and regard such behavior as manifesting flagrantly the denial of Christian doctrine. Medieval scholars of canon law imagine that Jews alone persist in distinguishing between permitted and prohibited foodstuffs and perceive adherence to dietary laws as a uniquely Jewish phenomenon: gentiles are supposed to eat all foods, just as Christians do. The fact that Muslims adhere to food restrictions, therefore, poses a challenge to Christian ideas about the distinction between Jews and gentiles: Muslims are gentiles, yet they behave like Jews! Awareness on the part of Islamic authorities that Christian butchers may not adhere to Qur’anic norms when slaughtering animals, in turn, challenges the symbolically significant distinction which Sunni jurists perceive between idolaters and recipients of divine revelations . Christians, as Scripturists, are supposed to observe the basic norms found in the Qur’an, yet Christians behave like idolaters! Sunni and Christian authorities, however, do not allow troubling data about one another’s food practices to unseat the established spectrums along which they place distinct religious communities, and these authorities never consider the possibility that traditional classifications of foreigners might be inadequate or inaccurate. Instead, Sunnis and Christians devote considerable effort to preserving the congruence of their ideas about foreigners and the restrictions that transform these ideas into normative realities. Some redefine traditional rules about food in order to maintain the function of foreign food restrictions as markers of established distinctions 197 amongforeigners.Othersinsteadredefinecontemporaryforeignersasdeviantsfrom past practices whose food, although once permissible, is now forbidden. These acts of redefinition reveal the importance of traditional classificatory systems to Christian and Islamic authorities alike. Indeed, we will find that the different methods by which Christians and Muslims traditionally classify foreigners dictate the different ways in which they interpret information about the religious practices of foreigners. Islamic and Christian discourse about one another’s food also reflects a fundamental difference between Sunni and Christian conceptions of foreigners: the former ascribe specific significance to Christianity as well as to Judaism, whereas the latter—even in their discussions of Muslims—are concerned primarily about the Jews. Because foreign food restrictions embody conceptions of the relationships between Us and Them, they shed light on the different roles which foreigners play in the medieval self-definitions of Sunni Islam and Latin Christianity. SUNNI EFFORTS TO ACCOUNT FOR CHRISTIAN METHODS OF ANIMAL SLAUGHTER We observed earlier that Shi‘i authorities condemn the willingness of their Sunni counterparts to permit consumption ofmeatprepared by Jews and,especially, Christians . The trouble with the latter, according to figures like Ja‘far al-úādiq and pseudo–Ibn Shādhān, is that they invoke Christ, rather than God, when performing the act of animal slaughter. Sunnis also express concern about this Christian manner of animal slaughter, which would seem to render the resulting meat unfit for Muslim consumption on the grounds that the Qur’an prohibits eating “that over which [a name] other than God’s has been invoked” (5.3). The likelihood that a Christian butcher would actually invoke the name of Christ, a practice which to my knowledge is unattested in Christian literature, need not detain us, as Islamic jurists imagined the matter to be a real and pressing concern.1 Sunni authorities in North Africa and Andalusia also express concern over the fact that Christians neglect to perform the act of animal slaughter required by the Qur’an, an act in which the animal’s blood is drained. This concern is well-founded: we have seen that Augustine rejects the continued authority of the Apostolic Decree’s prohibitions against consuming blood and the meat of animals killed by strangulation, and the practice of medieval Christians in the Western Mediterranean region conforms to Augustine’s opinion on this subject. Shi‘i authorities categorically prohibit the consumption of all meat prepared by Christians and are quite happy to declare that Christians, like idolaters, lack an accurate understanding of God and the divine will. For Sunnis, however, the issues raised by Christian methods of animal slaughter are considerably more complicated. According to Sunni authorities, the Qur’an’s permission of meat prepared by Jews...

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