And, given the price of fish these days, it’s hardly “humble” food. To stay true to the spirit of the thing, we should probably all eat Kraft Mac & Cheese on Fridays in Lent…
Also, the characters may be portrayed as Muslims by the narrator for the sake of making them sympathetic to the audience, but they conduct themselves in the story according to the culture of the respective nation that originated the tale.
And the after-meal drink (to help digestion) is a common practice in many cultures, it’s even recommended in one of Paul’s letters (grape juice, schmape juice).
I’m afraid that we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Do you have a citation?
How many are portrayed as muslims? There are many about whom it would be obvious that they are not muslims to a reader just through context, definitely at the time and even today. Aladdin is set in “China”; read far east, the name is a term with a meaning like everyman, Sherazade means townswomen and “Sultan” at the time meant any warlord or leader. Many of the characters are clearly not meant to be muslims. Also at the time the stories were compiled (and many pre dated Islam) a large number of readers (perhaps even a majority) would not have been muslims.
High Fructose Corn Syrup, by IV. 
Lust: I, too, would like to see a cite about the Pope trying to help the fish industry with the no meat on Friday rule. This isn’t a GD thing where we can “agree to disagree”. You made a statement of fact, and if you can’t back it up, then just admit you don’t know.
Some posts in this thread have been exaggerating the amount of non-Arabic-origin content in Alf Layla wa-Laylah. Its textual history is very long and complex. The core of the collection, the original collection that started it all, was Hindu. A collection of stories within a frame story. The Pañcatantra. Because of Persia’s proximity to India, the Indian stories became popular in Persia too, and another layer of accretion was added to it: a stratum of Persian stories. The frame story with Shahrzād is from this Persian phase. Baghdad during the time of Hārūn al-Rashīd was an Arab city whose culture was Persianized. This is where the best-known stratum of stories was added, Arabic in the original. What most people think of when they think of Alf Laylah. The latest accretion, and the biggest in extent, is from medieval Cairo. From the Mamluk period, I think.
Something like three-quarters of the whole collection is from Arabic originals.
AK84, I wonder whether the name ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ‘the height of the faith’ was used in the story because it was an everyman sort of name, or did it become an everyman sort of name because of the famous story? This was all a long time ago. The literal meaning of Shahrzād is ‘daughter of the city’, shahr zād. Which does sound like it could be an everyperson sort of name. There is no grammatical gender in Persian, and zād or zādeh can mean either son or daughter. Her evil husband’s name Shahryār means ‘friend of the city’. Some friend, huh.
*I feel the spelling <Scheherazade> is a garbled and clunky transliteration of the Persian phrase
I don’t remember very many, if any, explicit mentions that a particular character is Muslim, but there certainly seemed to be a lot of “Praise Allah!” and “By Allah!”, and so on. Which I suppose could just indicate characters raised in a predominantly-Muslim environment, without necessarily saying anything about their own faith.
Allah is just the Arabic word for God, which again does not indicate religion and more then saying “God” indicated Christianity.
Well, the idea of not eating meat is mentioned in the Bible itself as something people with lesser faith do. And I’m talking something written by Paul, so definitely within the first century. Romans 14:1-3 says:
And since later verses describe actual differences of opinion, it is clear that verse two (bolded above) is also not hypothetical.
And, Chronos, those verses about not eating meat with blood in it are specifically concerned likewise with appearances. Paul makes an exception for the first requirement (meat sacrificed to idols), so it makes sense that there may be some for later ones. It’s not so much ignored but argued away, using Romans 14 as a guide.
In 1 Timothy 4:1-4, gives the answer, there will be those who will forbid eating many things of which God gave for his creation to enjoy, but this forbbiding would not be from God.
Christian Apostles, wrote letters to christian congreations as in the Book of Acts 15:20,and 29,:
“to abstain from what is strangled and from blood”, so what ever meat a christian was to eat it must be free of blood.
I 'll have a little look around, obviously as this is a subject of some importance to me I’ll make it my main priority and make sure that I devote plenty of time to the search in lieu of other activities.
I always respond when mischevious third parties do a little shit stirring.
Honest !