pursuing it and ended up being killed. They place Muhammad and Moses in the first category, and the Messiah in the second.

It contains mockery of prayer, zakat, fasting and pilgrimage, and declares marriage to women within the prohibited degrees of kinship and all other indecencies lawful, in ways too lengthy to describe. They have signals and forms of address by which they recognize one another. When they are in Muslim lands where believers are numerous, they may escape the notice of those unfamiliar with them. But where they themselves are numerous, even ordinary people recognize them, let alone those with specialized knowledge.

Muslim scholars have unanimously agreed that intermarriage with these people is impermissible: a man may neither give a woman under his guardianship in marriage to one of them nor marry a woman from among them. Nor is it permissible to eat animals they slaughter.

As for “cheese made with their rennet,” scholars hold two well-known views, as they do regarding rennet from carrion generally, or from animals slaughtered by Magians or by the Franks, who are said not to slaughter animals in the prescribed manner.

The position of Abū Hanīfa, and of Ahmad according to one of the two reports from him, is that this cheese is lawful. According to this view, rennet from carrion is ritually pure, because the rennet does not die when the animal dies, and contact with the impure stomach containing it does not render it impure.

The position of Mālik, al-Shāfi‘ī and Ahmad, according to the other report from him, is that this cheese is ritually impure, because they regard the rennet as impure: in their view, both the milk and the rennet of an animal that has died without valid slaughter are impure. An animal slaughtered by someone whose slaughtered animals may not be eaten is treated as carrion.

The proponents of each view cite reports they transmit from the Companions. Those holding the first view report that the Companions ate cheese made by the Magians. The proponents of the second view