Imaginative new definitions for sin in a changing world

The following in on the front page of Motor Authority, a site I check every day. Okay, okay. I've never read it before. It was forwarded to me by the man with whom I live. But wow. Say what you will about the Muslim religion, this has to be the most creative new definition of sin to come along in my lifetime. It brings sin in to a fantastic previously unexplored wonderland realm.

"Saudi Muslim Scholar calls Ethanol Fuel Use a Sin"
Posted Today, 12:22 PM by Kenneth Hall

The use of alcohol-based fuels could be a violation of Islamic precepts

In the Koran the Prophet Mohammed set out clear rules for Muslim interaction with alcohol, forbidding the use, purchase, sale, service, transportation or even manufacture of the substance. And that's the basis a Saudi Muslim scholar is using to call ethanol use by Muslims a sin.

Setting aside the obvious motivation to preserve oil use and production, the religious case against ethanol is a strong one. Fuel ethanol is, by chemical definition, nearly pure alcohol. And it is the same type of alcohol used recreationally the world over.

A scholar at the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, is the source of the warning - he's been careful not to call it a fatwa - about the use or involvement with ethanol fuel. The story began with the scholar warning students traveling outside Saudi Arabia not to use ethanol powered vehicles.

Far from a final decision on the matter, however, Najimi has proposed further study on the matter, though he stands by his interpretation. There does remain some room for interpretation, as the scriptural basis for the prohibition appears to be rooted in the intoxicating nature of ethanol, not as a general proscription against its molecular structure.

For instance, ethanol is a necessary element in the production of vinegar, which the Koran notes was a seasoning favored by Mohammed.

Regardless of whether the fuel is contraband for Muslims, however, many other reasons not to use ethanol have been cropping up over the past year. Taking away valuable crop sources, pollution due to fertilizers, harm to the soil, and the lack of a sustainable production model have all come to weigh against the use of crop-based ethanol.

Other methods of production, such as the bacterial sources espoused by Coskata and Mascoma, on the other hand, may yet prove viable, especially as they learn to convert inorganic waste products - trash - into fuel, tapping into a plentiful resource that no one will miss.
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Yes, yes, but you can't make cocktails out of vinegar, bacteria sources or organic waste products.
Or can you?

Comments

[JosephbinMuhammad]

Ethanol use is a sin, but for different reason. Qur'an states intoxicants have some benefit (and small amounts of alcohol do have health benefits, science proves) but are to be avoided for their larger detriments Avoidance is not strict prohibition and the prohibition on alcohol that does exist is on use for intoxication.

Ethanol use is a sin because we do not have the available land capacity to produce food and support bio-fuel production for a motorized-­transporta­tion-depen­dent world.

Most Islamic scholars will tell you we cannot eat pork because pigs are "unnatural" or "unclean" or don't have sweat glands. Christians eating pork (mistakingly believing Christ lifted prohibition on pork in a statement about the disciples not washing their hands) laugh at this. The scientific reason is, it takes four kilos of grain to produce one kilo of pork. It is inefficient crop, promoting human starvation. Humans need that grain.

The people in Haiti, I read on the Internet this time last year, are eating dirt cookies to survive. And there are other places around the world where people are going hungry. With the storms and droughts and other climatic upheavals of climate change, available land and food resources will also decline.

Bio-fuels are a sin for those reasons. The use of gasoline is also a sin for various reasons of industrial pollution even if all of this was divorced from a capitalist system.

Bio-fuels are not part of the future, bicycling and walking are.

[Bruce Fenton]

Unfortunately this article is typical of so many about the region: taking one isolated comment by one person, twisting it, then acting as if it is somehow relevant or representative of a majority in any way. These kind of articles come out pretty regularly- they almost all originate from the same few sources and get repeated and repeated until the next one comes out. This leads to all the misconceptions and the feelings by Americans that "Arabs do XYZ" or "Muslims believe XYZ" when really it is based on a statement that is no more representative than if we wrote articles about what every extreme Christian in the US said. Its sad.

[slg]

Will it ever be possible to conduct our lives free of authoritarians?

[JohnFromCensornati]

Merrill,
Your posts are too few and far between. I loved Walking in Circles.

Chalk this up to "making it up as they go along". Religion is remarkably flexible when it comes to condemnation.

[LeftRight]

Reminds me of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints suddenly deciding that caffeine (a substance prohibited for consumption by Mormons....) was acceptable, as long as it was in Pepsi products, the day after the church bought a major share in Pepsico!

[JohnFromCensornati]

LOL. I've never heard that one!

[macohmz]

Greed will always be a sin.