#111: Ruling on Alcoholic Preservatives
“Assalaamu Alaykum. Islamically drinking of alcohol is haram, and we eat cake, and cake has been preserved by alcohol’s. Does that mean we should stop eating cake. My lecturer just blast me with dat.”
ANSWER:
Wa alaykum salām Warahmatullāh Wabarakātuh
Alhamdulillāh.
It is permissible to take any of such foods in which the industrial alcohols are used as preservatives as long as its intoxicating effect is not experienced if much of the food is eaten by virtue of its trace. This is because the quantity of the alcohol is trace and its industrially synthesized to not be intoxicating.
However, if by eating large amounts of this food that was preserved with the said alcohol, intoxication occurs, it is Harām then to eat it even in small quantity.
What we have said is the Fatwa of the Ulamā of our time to include Shaykh Muhammad Sālih Al-Uthaymīn, Shaykh Muhammad Al-Hasan Ad-Daduw – hafidhahullāh and others.
Bārakallāhu Fīkum
Jazākumullāhu Khayran
Assalāmu alaykum Warahmatullāh Wabarakātuh.
27th Al Muharram 1438
