Muslims in the West: Too small to matter? Low alcohol drinks OK’ed in Britain

99 bottles of…

This just in: It’s OK for Muslims to drink alcohol and eat pork. The caveat: only in small quantities. Until recently, many Muslims and Islamic scholars had taken a “zero tolerance” approach to the issue, which made life difficult for many Muslims, who found that even ordinary soft drinks would have a minute, yet detectible amount of alcohol and/or gelatin (which can be derived from pigs) in it. But a recent ruling by the UK Muslim Law Council, which is Britain’s highest authority on what is halal and what isn’t, said that there are amounts that are too small to matter. “I see no harm in consuming Ribena and Lucozade (popular British juice and energy drinks),” wrote Council chair Zaki Badawi, “which contain traces of ethyl alcohol and animal ingredients that do not bear their original qualities and do not change the taste, colour or smell of the product.” Badawi cited the documented practice of the Prophet Muhammad of soaking raisins and dates in water and drinking the result after three days. (No word yet on whether the ruling exonerates non-alcoholic beer and its trace amounts of alcohol.) More significantly, however, is the part of the ruling which allows drinks containing animal gelatin – which has been a major bugaboo for Muslims and has resulted in a cottage industry of halal Jell-O knockoffs and marshmallows. “Because even if [the gelatin] is made from haram meat it has undergone fundamental process of transformation through certain chemical changes that is called ‘istihalah’ in Islamic law,” wrote Dr. Nazih Hammad, a member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy and Fiqh Council of North America. So on your next Muslim camping trip, feel free to toast Smores by an open fire with a cold O’Douls in your other hand.

Zahed Amanullah is associate editor of altmuslim.com.  He is based in London, England.