Abstract

AbstractShahab Ahmed’sWhat Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic(2016) challenges Islamic Studies scholars, (art) historians, and anthropologists to reconsider theoretical frameworks underpinning historical and ethnographic research. This article addresses Ahmed’s concerns that studies of Islam often conceptually privilege orthodoxy, by including drinking and intoxication as worthy of close attention in examining the history and the anthropology of Islam. The case of Wine Shop the Philosopher, run by a former Afghan refugee in The Hague and Amsterdam, is presented after establishing the comparative and interdisciplinary relevance of alcohol consumption in studies of Islam and Muslims. Ahmed’s conceptual framework is used and assessed in comparison with the wine shops’ contemporary pluralist reality by exploring the idealized boundaries of Persianate culture and Islam in dialogues between Persian-speaking interlocutors. It is argued that alcoholic drinks lend themselves to competing gastro-nationalisms and prompt ethnolinguistic tensions between and within groups with Turkish, Moroccan, Iranian, and Afghan backgrounds in the Netherlands. The focus on diverse, coexisting and clashing drink regimes, in conclusion, allows us to deconstruct dichotomies between sober Muslims and European drinkers, African and Asian believers and European unbelievers, and refugees and citizens.

Highlights

  • I gathered information from national newspaper articles focusing on Islam, Muslims, and drinking in the Netherlands, as well as from letters from Dutch and Turkish diplomats and politicians after the latter accused Ofran of dishonoring Rūmī by selling a vodka named after him

  • “Even if one does not believe,” I suggested, comparing Wine Shop the Philosopher and Ahmed’s frameworks, “with our Iranian-Afghan backgrounds, drinking a glass of wine is meaningful through Islamic references

  • I revisited Wine Shop the Philosopher a year later, when the controversy had subsided, with Arash, an Iranian doctoral student in Islamic Studies who was enthusiastic about seeing the store

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Summary

Introduction

I gathered information from national newspaper articles focusing on Islam, Muslims, and drinking in the Netherlands, as well as from letters from Dutch and Turkish diplomats and politicians after the latter accused Ofran of dishonoring Rūmī by selling a vodka named after him.

Results
Conclusion

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