iSaac
Here’s a neat bit of e-commerce: Religious organizations in Pakistan are using the Internet to help Muslims in Western countries buy and sacrifice animals for an annual festival.
Eid al-Adha marks the end of the Haj pilgrimage each year to Mecca and is known as the feast of sacrifice. Muslims who can afford it buy and slaughter animals and distribute the meat among the poor and relatives.
Muslims in Western countries unable to perform the ritual can now buy an animal over the Internet, and even watch it being slaughtered, before its meat is given away.
The most interesting part of this article is right at the end, where they report that some Muslims don’t practice e-commerce because it involves payment of interest (I’m assuming to companies like PayPal) or on their credit cards. According to a Wikipedia article on Islamic banking: In particular, Islamic law prohibits usury, the collection and payment of interest, also commonly called riba in Islamic discourse. Generally, Islamic law also prohibits trading in financial risk (which is seen as a form of gambling).