Leor E. Halevi

This project examines historically Muslim legal perceptions of non-Muslim commodities, from the rise of Islam to the present day. Many experts on Islamic law earned their livelihood as merchants and thus appreciated the benefits of cross-cultural trade. Yet they worried that through such trade they would expose their bodies and communities to impurity, and so proposed ideological restrictions to regulate this commerce. This resulted in a productive tension in Islamic legal thought between an economic interest in porous communal boundaries and a religious interest in social exclusivity. As Muslim jurists reflected on non-Muslims and their worldly goods, they also sought, in different ways and in different historical circumstances, to define an Islamic social identity.