This talk will focus on how Chinese Hui Muslim men and women living in Southwest China think about haram prohibitions in Islam. When confronted with alcohol in the course of daily life with others, they resort to the practice of staying away from haram that seems to depend on the presence of alcohol just as on its prohibited status. This practice results in the formation of ethical distance that links haram with the cultivation of such basic human virtues as tolerance and patience. Thus, not only the acts of these Muslims unsettle the purity/pollution binary prevalent in the anthropological approaches to taboo, but they also demand to reconsider how we think about diversity and coexistence in our increasingly divided world today.