Lecture 12: Islam—A Thousand and One Nights of Cooking
Unlike the founders of most religions, we actually know a great
deal about the life of the prophet Muhammad, who was a merchant
that was often found wandering out in the hills, where he began to
have visions and started to realize that he is the messenger of God
and that there is only one God. This society was pagan and polytheistic at this time, but there were
Jewish and Christian populations in Mecca, and his ideas were very
deeply infl uenced by theirs. In fact, Islam considers them earlier
prophecies of the same God, Allah. Islam is just the last and most
complete religion. Most importantly, Islam is monotheistic. Muhammad started to get followers—a lot of them in Mecca.
Starting on September 24, 622 (the fi rst day of the Islamic calendar
in the Western calendar), everything he said was written down
and became the Koran. Islam spread like wildfi re throughout
the peninsula, and the armies of Islam converted the peoples it
conquered through force. This was not a religion of peace, but
many people willingly joined. Islam has an explicit vision of the pleasures that await the faithful
in paradise. Judaism doesn’t have that at all, and Christianity
only vaguely has that. The Muslim paradise is laden with fragrant
fl owers, running streams, and cushions to rest on while you much
on exotic fruits and sweets. Every sense is stimulated. Unlike so
many other religions, there is no stigma against sensual pleasure—
because that’s what heaven is all about. There is no ascetic tradition in Islam, with the exception of a few
mystical sects. For the most part, this is a religion that encourages
the arts (with the exception of depictions of God, which is idolatry),
architecture, music, and especially complex cooking—which is
raised to a fi ne art.Islamic Food Prohibitions and Customs
Islam has some food prohibitions that are like the Jewish ones
in certain respects, but Islamic food prohibitions are much less