Forbidden Goods: The History of Cross-Cultural Trade in Islamic Law

FAIN: FA-53734-08

Leor Edward Halevi
Texas A & M University, College Station (College Station, TX 77843-0001)

My project concerns Islamic laws about foreign commodities and cross-cultural trade. Many Muslim experts on Islamic law earned their livelihood as merchants and thus appreciated the benefits of unrestricted trade with non-Muslims. Yet they worried that through such trade they would expose their bodies and communities to impurity, and so proposed restrictions to regulate this commerce. This tension between an economic interest in porous communal boundaries and a religious interest in social exclusivity fascinates me. As an historian of religion, I will bring a new perspective to bear on a field that has been dominated by economic historians. My book monograph will be the first history of juridical discussions on non-Muslim goods. It will appeal to a broad audience, due to humanistic interest in interactions between Muslims and others, and due to consumer fascination -- in this age of global commerce -- with local reactions to foreign goods.

Associated Products

Christian Impurity versus Economic Necessity: A Fifteenth-Century Fatwa on European Paper (Article)
Title: Christian Impurity versus Economic Necessity: A Fifteenth-Century Fatwa on European Paper
Author: Leor Halevi
Abstract: This article is an in-depth examination of a religious edict by a Muslim jurist concerning European paper. This product caused some controversy in Muslim circles because it contained watermarks of the cross and other Christian symbols. But the North African jurist -- in one of our earliest and most complex responses to the rise of the West -- actually finds religious justifications for using the foreign product.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6669180
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Speculum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

The Consumer Jihad: Boycott Fatwas and Nonviolent Resistance on the World Wide Web (Article)
Title: The Consumer Jihad: Boycott Fatwas and Nonviolent Resistance on the World Wide Web
Author: Leor Halevi
Abstract: This article deals with the origins, development, and popularity of boycott fatwas. Born of the marriage of Islamic politics and Islamic economics in an age of digital communications, these fatwas targeted American, Israeli, and Danish commodities between 2000 and 2006. Muftis representing both mainstream and, surprisingly, radical tendencies argued that jihad can be accomplished through nonviolent consumer boycotts. Their argument marks a significant development in the history of jihad doctrine because boycotts, construed as jihadi acts, do not belong to the commonplace categories of jihad as a “military” or a “spiritual” struggle. The article also demonstrates that boycott fatwas emerged, to a large degree, from below. New media, in particular interconnected computer networks, made it easier for laypersons to drive the juridical discourse. They did so before September 11 as well as, more insistently, afterward. Their consumer jihad had some economic impact on targeted multinationals, and it provoked corporate reactions.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=8480779&jid=MES&volumeId=44&issueId=01&aid=8480777
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: International Journal of Middle East Studies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Religion and Cross-Cultural Trade: A Framework for Interdisciplinary Inquiry (Article)
Title: Religion and Cross-Cultural Trade: A Framework for Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Author: Leor Halevi
Abstract: na
Year: 2014
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900
Publisher: New York: Oxford University Press

Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935 (Book)
Title: Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935
Author: Leor Halevi
Abstract: In cities awakening to global exchange under European imperial rule, Muslims encountered all sorts of strange and wonderful new things - synthetic toothbrushes, toilet paper, telegraphs, railways, gramophones, brimmed hats, tailored pants, and lottery tickets. The passage of these goods across cultural frontiers spurred passionate debates. Realizing that these goods were changing religious practices and values, proponents and critics wondered what to outlaw and what to permit. In this book, Leor Halevi tells the story of the Islamic trials of technological and commercial novelties of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He focuses on the communications of an entrepreneurial Syrian interpreter of the shari'a named Rashid Rida, who became a renowned reformer by responding to the demand for authoritative and authentic religious advice. Upon migrating to Egypt, Rida founded an Islamic magazine, The Lighthouse, which cultivated an educated, prosperous readership within and beyond the British Empire. To an audience eager to know if their scriptures sanctioned particular interactions with particular objects, he preached the message that by rediscovering Islam's foundational spirit, the global community of Muslims would thrive and realize modernity's religious and secular promises. Through Rida's international correspondence, Halevi argues that religious entanglements with new commodities and technologies were the driving forces behind local and global projects to reform the Islamic legal tradition.
Year: 2019
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780231188661
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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