Shaikh Al-Albani:
What is with you [of question]?
Questioner:
The issue of food: there are types of chocolate or other than chocolate which have attached to it an amount of alcohol during the manufacturing. However, it is said that this amount of chocolate changes/converts. So does this [chocolate] take the ruling of cheese in this condition?
Shaikh Al Albani:
This issue, first, requires something of detail and I am not sure you have (knowledge) of it or not? Is this amount of (alcohol) a lot or less?
Questioner:
It is said…
Shaikh Al Albani:
patience.
Second, is it correct that this amount converts if it is a lot or less?
Questioner:
There is a brother who establishes researches in this field of chemistry and he said that the amount attached is small and all of it it converts during the manufacture.
Shaikh Al-Albani:
Yes, based on that or what your friend said owing to you, we say: we answered this question in connection to the medicines. We all know that a large group of medicines have written on them: this amount of alcohol, ten percent, fifteen percent alcohol, less or more. Let alone the colognes.
You know this.
Questioner:
Yes.
Shaikh:
Good. So we say in regards to this medicine and chocolate, which is asked about, we say: if it is correct what you said: It is permissible to eat it, sell it, and buy it from the disbelievers and it is not allowed to make it in the land of Islaam.
Why this differentiation? Medicine, no doubt, is more important than chocolate because chocolate is from the fine luxuries and medicine is from the necessities. With that, it is not allowed to make a medicine in the land of Islaam that has alcohol. Why? Because that will require from the manufacturer of this medicine to make alcohol and press grapes to alcohol. This is not allowed absolutely in the lands of Islaam from what we know of the statement عليه السلام:
لعنَ رسولُ اللَّهِ صلَّى اللَّهُ علَيهِ وسلَّمَ في الخَمرِ عشرةً : عاصرَها ، ومُعتصرَها ، والمعصورةَ لَهُ ، وحاملَها ، والمَحمولةَ لَهُ
The Messenger (ﷺ) cursed ten in regards to Alcohol: the one who presses it, the one who asks for it to be pressed, the one for whom it is pressed it for, the one who carries it, the one whom it is carried for…
[Saheeh at-Targheeb no. 2357]
Therefore, to manufacture medicine with alcohol, it requires pressing grapes into alcohol and the one who does it is cursed. That is not permitted.
If the medicine comes to us manufactured in the land of the disbelievers, whom Allah described that they do not make things lawful and unlawful, this medicine we say: if a lot of it does not intoxicate, then it is allowed to drink it because it is a drink.
Then we return to chocolate: if it is correct what you informed that this alcohol converts after its manufacture [words unclear], it is permissible to eat it and I return to emphasize: it it not allowed to manufacture it in the lands of Islaam. End translation. [Silsilatul-Huda wan-nur no. 491]
Translated by
Faisal Ibn Abdul Qaadir Ibn Hassan
Abu Sulaymaan
