VODKA AKBAR !

Muslims Pissed At Allah On Vodka Bottle

Post by Jim Newman

The Washington Post had a small blurb on allah on a bottle.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan

— Muslims in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan are up in arms at a vodka producer for including the word “Allah” on its liquor bottles.

Finally, the muslims have come to their senses on liquor as being the nectar of the gods? Something most civilizations have understood for millennia. Indeed, even the lowly fruit fly has learned to drown his sorrows when prevented from mating with a female–yes, even a fruit fly drinks alcohol when he doesn’t get enough of it.

The Bible has some 200 positive references to alcohol and a few castigations to bad vices including drunkenness. Dionysus the greek god of culture, art, was first that of wine, grape harvest, and the rituals of madness and ecstasy–how often they go together. First bearded, Dionysus is later portrayed as beardless, bare chested, and androgynous–the first metro sexual!

While I would love to discuss the importance of madness, ecstasy, and the chemicals and action we use to induce these states, whether liquor or the Muslim whirling dervish or Southern Gospel tradition or speaking in tongues or playing dungeons and dragons late at night, I forsake this pleasure.

Muslims can’t stand liquor because life is to be an odious, difficult burden, a service to allah; depending on the scholar you follow you are either the hand of allah or allah flows though you. Joy is service to allah, only!

Privately owned Channel 31 cited Bekzat Boranbaiuly, head imam at a mosque in the city of Semey, as saying the vodka maker should seek forgiveness for the blasphemous use of the sentence “The Power of Allah Suffices for All.”

Islam strictly forbids drinking alcohol.

I wish I had good statistics on how bad drunkenness was a social problem 1500 years ago. Even if it were high it is not the driving force behind muslim prohibition. Strictly speaking any chemical or activity that would take you away from sincere, devout, and serious worship of allah is forbidden.

When I was in Istanbuhl last fall, I tried the local beer. My taxi cab driver took me there. He danced at the cosmopolitan clubs at night and his clothes were the most expensive thing he owned. Dancing has become a more legitimate way to ecstasy. The whirling dervish, though of a sect, best expresses the slow, hypnotizing, and exotic aspects of sincere madness-inducing, trance states.

Though we washed our hands before visiting the mosque, my taxi driver was clearly a modern hybrid but fiercely proud of his traditions and country. He didn’t have to understand it all but did believe he should follow what he could, because he should. Reason doesn’t really enter the picture. Obedience and desire form the box. Obedience to the rules and the desire to stray.

It is as simple as the sheep and the shepherd where the big polarity is the necessity to stay against the desire to leave. It is a near perfect example of inclusion-exclusion tension but embodied in real world aspects like the desire for joy versus the need to be serious.

Channel 31 said in its report Tuesday evening the vodka brand is available in most shops in the northern Kazakhstan city of Semey at an average price of $4.40.

Ethnic Kazakhs are mainly Sunni Muslim, but religious attitudes are generally fairly relaxed. The country has a large Slavic minority and the consumption of alcohol is popular across the board.

Making the image of allah a taboo has the added benefit of making the cost of admission to the sacred club so high that one has to be very devout to be accepted and you are not likely to leave. Not only can you not drink, you can’t put the image of allah on any material form, especially alcohol bottles, even if it is in praise of allah.

Lest those of us in a Jewish-Christian country think we are wholly superior to this, consider how we handle sex, nature, and god in advertising. We only allow the first two.

While not always against the law, considering the many local laws, have any of you had Jesus Beer, Godly Bourbon, Heavenly Wine, Biblical Pot, Hell’s Chilli Pepper Barbecue Sauce, Virgin Mary’s Birth Control Pills, Jesus Joints, God’s Scotch, Heathen Beef Jerky, Christ’s Grits, Baby Jesus Diaper Rash Cream, or Eucharist Blood Sausage?

These products wouldn’t last a minute. In the West we have become controlling by having the prohibition be understood, implicitly, without the need for a direct law. Instead of a blasphemy prohibition, western society embraces political correctness, and moral concern, by the value and virtue of good taste, concern, and decency.

Nevertheless, the preservation of sacred terms, images, and discussion in the West is still sacrosanct.

We just shun rather than threaten death and stoning. Oddly enough, that is as much progress as we seem to be able to ask for now.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com
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