Tobacco and other drugs?

Bottle_of_Smoke

InFront wrote:

Yeah non-alcoholic beer does in fact contain alcohol as HelterSkelter said. Even at such low volume, I would just avoid it. Think about it this way, even 0,01% alcohol in a glass still contains millions of molecules of ethanol! (alcohol):) It's usually better to dwell on the safe side I think

Yeah, & there's absoloutly no practical benefit because it tastes so very, very....VERY bad!

HelterSkelter

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote:

Yeah, & there's absoloutly no practical benefit because it tastes so very, very....VERY bad!

You might want to look cool by drinking it!! lol And actually, I've had tiger beer (non-alcoholic) and it was very nice. But this is coming from an irishman who is used to drinking beer!!

maitri

InFront wrote:

Yeah non-alcoholic beer does in fact contain alcohol as HelterSkelter said. Even at such low volume, I would just avoid it. Think about it this way, even 0,01% alcohol in a glass still contains millions of molecules of ethanol! (alcohol):) It's usually better to dwell on the safe side I think

Just being curious: You say you want to "dwell on the safe side". What's the risk here, then, as you see it?

And if there really is a risk, don't you have the same risk with apple juice (or even apples and other fruits) and some kinds of milk?

BTW, while writing this post I just came across this Muslim article that seems to shed som light on the topic (though I don't know whether you agree with the writer or not):

http://www.themodernreligion.com/health/diet.html

Regards,

M.

InFront

maitri wrote:

You say you want to "dwell on the safe side". What's the risk here, then, as you see it?

What I mean here is risk in terms of Islamic health - avoiding things that have valid doubt attached. Or even if it were found to be halal, I would have a problem with the "implied" content of something labelled "beer", just on a personal level... not sure why really! Anyway there are so many normal drinks, why bother with it?:) (Interesting link btw)

don't you have the same risk with apple juice (or even apples and other fruits) and some kinds of milk?

It is sometimes said if you were to walk into any supermarket you could trace something in everything that comes from possibly "doubtful" sources - be they industrial cleaners, extraction methods, shared production machinery with pork - it could be anything. Unlike n.a. beer, we don't really know. I don't think we should spend too much time worrying about it. If we as Muslims avoided haram in daily life as much as we avoid haram of the diet, we would be very pure people indeed!

Truther

What about soft drinks like Coca Cola, and others, that contain a dangerous sweetener called Aspartame, and many other harmful ingredients? I don't think soft drinks contain alcohol, or tobacco, but would these drinks also be forbiddon?

the_new_mr

Well, looks like there's no need to start a few topic about then

It's a very long and complicated issue. I for one didn't know that non-alcoholic beer always had a small trace of alcohol. I just thought there was some that had small traces and others that had none at all. I enjoy the odd can of non-alcoholic beer myself.

My wife's husband (God rest his soul) was a big dude when it comes to religious issues. He was one of the heads of a sufi organisation. Honestly, I don't know much about him but I do know that once he asked for some non-alcoholic beer when visiting my family and my father informed him that there was 0.05% or 0.5% alcohol in it or something like that. Anyway, he said that it was okay since it was such a small amount.

Whether or not I'm not comfortable drinking non-alcoholic beer now, I'm not sure. But the point raised by Wibbs about fruit is a very good one.

And while writing this post, I decided to do a quick check on wikipedia to see if all non-alcoholic beers have alcohol in them. It seems they don't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-alcoholic_beer

And that article has a link to a very interesting article on the islamtoday.com website which seems to make sense.
http://islamtoday.com/showme2.cfm?cat_id=2&sub_cat_id=561

So, I think I feel a lot more comfortable now about drinking non-alcoholic beer whatever it's alcohol content. But, for the record, I don't like bananas that are too ripe. I prefer them nearly green. Useless piece of information for you there

blackthorn

newMR wrote:

My wife's husband (God rest his soul)

the_new_mr

WHOOOOPS!!!!

I meant to write my aunt's husband (God rest his soul).

I'm not speaking to you from beyond the grave

//Edit
Or maybe that could have been interpreted as my wife's former husband. It wasn't though. I've never been married

Truther

EDIT: Oh ok, lol

maitri

InFront wrote:

It is sometimes said if you were to walk into any supermarket you could trace something in everything that comes from possibly "doubtful" sources - be they industrial cleaners, extraction methods, shared production machinery with pork - it could be anything. Unlike n.a. beer, we don't really know. I don't think we should spend too much time worrying about it.

Good point!

InFront wrote:

If we as Muslims avoided haram in daily life as much as we avoid haram of the diet, we would be very pure people indeed!

the_new_mr

So, a family friend of ours gave us a gift of a box of Belgian chocolates about one and a half months ago but before deciding to try one of them, I thought I'd check the ingredients and, lo and behold, there it was: alcohol. It was number 15 on the ingredients list out of 21 items which means it must have been a particularly small amount. However, I still felt uncomfortable about it.

Then, the topic of what is okay and what isn't came up on this thread and I eventually became convinced that having one or two of these chocolates would be okay based on what was written on that islamtoday.com article. Wibbs' very good point of the overly ripe fruit also got me thinking.

So, tried two of them today and made a secret prayer under my breath to God to affirm to Him that it's not my intention to eat the chocolates for their (albeit small) amount of alcohol. In the end, they weren't very nice But at least now I know in case anyone offers me one in the future

Just before I ate one, the subject of chocolates with alcohol came up in the house and I think it's pretty safe to say that liquor chocolates (that is, chocolates with a large amount of liquid whiskey inside them) must surely be haram (forbidden) as they have a large amount in them. Can't see them being too nice anyway to be honest.