Muslim piety and the food of the gods

The paper explores a central concept in the Islamic tradition, namely 'piet y' (taqwa) as it appears in the Qur'an and certain early commentaries. Prob lems arise, however, when approaching the concept through translations of t he Qur'an into European languages (in this paper, examples are drawn from E nglish and Spanish) which frequently convey the equivalence of taqwa with ' fear.' By examining a key Qur'anic passage (Q 2:177) the paper leads to a d iscussion by the commentators al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir of rituals related t o food taboos, as a means of illuminating a fuller meaning of the Islamic n otion of "piety."