of course there were two interpretations:

1. the caliph is supreme and therefore it is not haram to drink

2. the qur'an is supreme and therefore it is haram to drink

when these are in conflict, one might either conclude, as Hasan did implicitly, that either the Qur'an is not supreme, or that the caliph is not supreme. Of course, one interpretation involved less risk - and was probably already attuned to his desire - than the other.

and yet some would refuse the drink and risk wrath. what proportion of humans would risk and what proportion would rationalize? what proportion of the time would any given individual risk or rationalize? the relatively small number of shia to sunni, and the even smaller number of kharijites, suggests that most would rationalize. the donatists where labeled heretics for their principled rejection of those who had entered into apostasy.

agreed, but its interesting to note that this is eactly the sort of scenario that gave rise to the Shi'a need for dissimulation. A Shi'a in that scenario would of course not interpret the Abbasid Caliph as supreme, but would probably be obligated to drink regardless. So there's a third option.

let me put it another way: many religious people may claim that interpretation of holy texts is the process via which one may divine the intent of the divine, so to speak. but the other alternative is that a particular interpretation serves as a post facto gloss upon a fait accompli determined and dictated by other needs. of course it isn't an either/or in a black & white dichotomy, some martyrs do 'irrationally' die for their religion and do not brook any compromise of their professed principles. but these are very rare individuals. and today most muslims likely avoid alcohol, but i don't think that this is such a powerful draw for most people, especially in cultures where drinking is not socially the norm (a better test would be american muslims who are integrated in most other ways with the non-muslims who they live with; your peers are not the caliph, but there is a pressure to conform and indulge them). i also suspect there is "friction" in terms of a step-wise process via rationalization so that religion can dampen, slow down or mitigate a particular decision. the cognitive process of rationalization requires cycles to operate, and those cycles may be important parameters we should take into account (e.g., you want to kill your neighbor, but you feel you should first submit your wishes to the ghazi, and that delay results in your neighbor's escape).

Then again, perhaps he thought temperance was for the little people.

It's not just religion - think for a moment about the number of people you've met that could have their minds changed by a purely logical argument on any subject, much less one they had strong feelings about. Rationalization is how the majority of human being justify all of their common actions.

caledonian, did you read below the fold? i said: "this isn't only an issue with religions, I have known of environmentalists who drive SUVs, self-proclaimed social conservatives who are heavy users of drugs and indulge in non-standard sexual practices, and so on." not a big deal, but i do expect anyone who comments to have actually read the whole post (if you did, that's fine, but you don't need to repeat what i said).

A friend of my fathers would say "Thou shalt not drink one drop of wine", and flick one drop from every glass onto the table.

Every scripture needs abridgment before it can be practiced. Even fundamentalists have to ignore a lot of it.

Even fundamentalists have to ignore a lot of it.

fundies rework or reinterpret most of it. the exegesis is only a little "closer to machine language."

caledonian, did you read below the fold?

Yes, but in retrospect I didn't phrase myself very well. Let me try again: rationalization is how most human decisionmaking takes place, with our feelings about what we should do deciding the course of action and our faculties of awareness creating a story about why we chose as we did.

Politics, medicine, choosing a life partner, choosing a religion, deciding on how we will behave - explicit axioms virtually never determine what we do. (And I would argue that many of the things razib mentions as non-religious are secular lifestyle systems that are religions in all but name.)

Some traditions put a great deal of emphasis on being consistent with explicit axioms, but people follow those axioms because they want to stay in good standing with the social group. If drinking alcohol will result in a high social cost when others find out, people will tend to refrain from doing so, even in secret, because the risk is too great. If not drinking alcohol makes the Caliph annoyed, and that has a higher cost, people will drink even if they don't particularly want to.

Even when people pay terrible prices for following moral or ethical precepts, in most cases they believe they'd be risking even more by not doing so - the monopolized resource of 'salvation' being an excellent case in point.

Quick addendum:

My feeling is that in the monotheistic religions, 'God' is just a personification of the will of society. People understand this intuitively, which is why atheists have previously been charged with disrupting the social order.

Caliphs are, effectively, God himself.

My feeling is that in the monotheistic religions, 'God' is just a personification of the will of society. People understand this intuitively, which is why atheists have previously been charged with disrupting the social order.

1) this is close to emile durkheim's idea

2) this isn't restricted to monotheism. classical romans and greeks charged people with atheism. sometimes they were genuine atheists, sometimes they were christians.

3) and it like isn't "just." sure, the socially unifying role of religion and the divine power is real, but i think one needs to be cautious about reducing god to a sociological tool. mystics and personal believers all seem to have their own ideas of god, and some of these are pretty similar across cultures, implying that the god that society is working with starts from some basal form.

does any reference to Omar khayyum help? Ghalib in post mughal india during the early british rule was quite a drunk.

Suleiman the Magnificent's son was known as "Selim the Sot".