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2 3 2 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3women went out after her in dance with frame drums (tuᵽîm). And Miriamchanted for them: Sing to the Lord” (Exod. 15:21). How are we to understandthis exception?One interesting ethnographic parallel to Miriam’s drumming can befound in a story connected to Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi communityin the nineteenth century. In the middle of the century, the leaderof the community, Rabbi Meir Auerbach, ruled that musical instrumentsshould be banned from wedding parties. The basis for Rabbi Auerbach’s banwas a message he claimed to have received in a dream according to which theexcessive passion animating Jerusalem’s wedding parties was responsible fora cholera epidemic then ravaging the community. 14 Rabbi Auerbach ruled,however, that one kind of musical instrument was permissible at weddingparties, namely, drums. 15 The parallel to the Bible’s suspicion of musicalinstruments, excepting the drums played by Miriam and the women ofIsrael, is remarkable.More remarkable, and even more precise, is a parallel found in the IslamicSalafi tradition. Salafi Islam is characterized by a puritanical and originalistapproach to interpreting Islam. The aspiration that animates Salafi Islam isto imitate the model of Muhammad as passed down by Muhammad’s companionsand found in reliable traditions of oral law. There are Salafis of bothactivist and quietist stripes, but both groups strive to jealously, zealouslypreserve the purity of what the Salafis perceive to be authentic Islam. Withregard to musical instruments, Salafi scholars consider them to be haram,forbidden. 16 Moreover, this ban is not purely theoretical. When the Talibanruled Afghanistan they implemented the ban on musical instruments,and Salafi Jihadis in Mali recently did the same. 17 One clear articulation ofthe Salafi view is set out in a late twentieth-century English-language text14The ban is still observed in Jerusalem today in certain Ashkenazi Jewish circles.15See Rabbi Aharon Kahn, “Music in Halakhic Perspective,” Journal of Halacha and ContemporarySociety 9 (1986–87): 22–24.16A helpful introduction to intra-Islamic polemics regarding the permissibility of music is AmnonShiloah, “Music and Religion in Islam,” Acta Musicologica 69, no. 2 (1997): 143–55. Especially interestingin the present context are Shiloah’s comments regarding the line of Cain: “Ibn al-Jawzi refers toa tradition reported by the historian al-Tabari (d. 922) according to which the inventor of musicalinstruments is a descendant of Kabel [Cain] named Tubal, who constructed pleasure-giving instruments.…The descendants of Cain used them to divert themselves” (154).17On the Taliban’s ban on music, see Nicholas Wroe, “A Culture Muted,” The Guardian, Oct. 13, 2001,http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/13/afghanistan.books. As for the ban on music in Mali,see Robin Denselow, “Mali Music Ban by Islamists ‘Crushing Culture to Impose Rule,’” The Guardian,Jan. 15, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jan/15/mali-music-ban-islamists-crushing.