Concerning the two transmitted opinions: Imam Aḥmad, under no circumstance, deemed wine permissible, even though its manufacture and trade are, in principle, allowed. The underlying rule here is therefore somewhat ambiguous. If one adopts the first possible reading of Aḥmad’s statement, he would allow the matter. In fact, two explicit reports from him address the permissibility of transporting merchandise to enemy territory (dār al-ḥarb).

From this it may be argued that selling such goods to them during their festival is comparable to sending them to dār al-ḥarb; for dispatching garments and foodstuffs to enemy lands is, in a general sense, assistance to their religion. If we forbid conveying them to enemy territory, then forbidding their sale during the festival is even more warranted. Most of Aḥmad’s foundational principles and textual statements point toward prohibiting it. Whether that prohibition is one of outright unlawfulness (taḥrīm) or merely of reprehensibility (tanzīh) will be clarified later.

ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb notes that the scholars unanimously regard this as disliked, and he explicitly states that Mālik’s school considers it unlawful. In his work al-Wāḍiḥa he writes: “Mālik disliked eating what the Christians slaughter for their churches and discouraged it, though without a categorical declaration of prohibition. The same applies to anything they slaughter in the name of the Messiah, the cross, or in the names of their deceased scholars and monks whom they venerate; Mālik and other imams worthy of emulation all disliked the consumption of any of that.”