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Alcohol and Islam is a relatively understudied topic, although alcohol abuse is a significant social problem both in Muslim majority countries and among Muslim minorities. Questions of religious identity as they relate to food and drink prescriptions and proscriptions also make alcohol and Islam a worthwhile topic. This article offers a general overview of alcohol and Islam. It briefly introduces alcohol and Islam in history; examines the main Islamic religious sources (the Quran, the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad. and Islamic law); analyzes World Health Organization statistics on contemporary patterns of abstention and alcohol consumption in Muslim majority countries; reviews the social science literature on alcohol studies in Muslim settings; presents Saudi Arabia and Turkey as opposite extremes of prohibition and permissiveness in Muslim majority countries; offers France as a case study of the effects of migration on abstention and drinking patterns of Muslims in minority settings (about a quarter of all Muslims live as religious minorities); and looks at the rationales that some Muslims give for drinking. In conclusion. the article places the problem of alcohol prohibition in a larger context

This article analyzes 113 fatwas (pieces of advice from Muslim scholars) in response to Internet usercontributed questions about correct behavior in situations involving alcohol. The fatwas are from IslamOnline.net, a popular Islamic Web site. Most of the questions on the English site are submitted by individuals living in non-Muslim countries, who are more likely to confront difficult situations relating to alcohol. In spite of the general condemnation of alcohol consumption in Islam, many individuals face ethical dilemmas and feel the need to request advice about proper behavior in situations involving alcohol, relating to the family, society, work, and bodily purity, as well as more abstract theological questions. KeywordsAlcohol; Islam; Muslim; Fatwa; Mufti The Internet boom in the last decade has both fueled research into subjects previously taboo, and opened up access to information by ordinary people seeking answers to complicated, seemingly unique problems. One such area concerns Muslims and alcohol, and it is covered on Web sites created by Muslim organizations to offer advice about correct Islamic behavior.

This study identifies social representations in interviews about alcohol and substance use in the discourse of 129 young adults, who were interviewed for 2.5 to 3.5 hours each for their life histories and use or non-use of alcoholic beverages and drugs. Respondents spontaneously delineated their substance use boundaries, creating a continuum of behaviors with boundary points separating acceptable from unacceptable behaviors. They used signaling expressions to indicate go and stop signs and movement along the substance use continuum and reported negotiating substance use boundaries both internally and with peers. A ubiquitous narrative element was the cautionary tale, in which a negative exemplar goes too far with alcohol and/or drugs, providing an example of the possible negative outcomes of transgressing boundaries. In general, the narratives revealed complex relationships to alcohol and other drugs that may be useful in refining messages for more effective communication in prevention and intervention programs.