UK Muslims Allowed To Buy 'Controversial' Soft Drinks

CAIRO, August3 , (IslamOnline.net) - The UK Muslim Law Council has given the Muslim community the go-ahead to buy soft drinks containing tiny traces of alcohol and pork by-products, a British daily reported Monday, August2 .

The council, Britain’s highest authority on halal food, has issued a fatwa making Lucozade and Ribena the first British soft drinks fit for Muslims, following deep Muslim concerns about ingredients in the brands, The Guardian said.

“I see no harm in consuming Ribena and Lucozade which contain traces of ethyl alcohol and animal ingredients that do not bear their original qualities and do not change the taste, color or smell of the product,” Zaki Badawi, the UK Muslim Law Council chair and former adviser on Islam to the Prince of Wales, concluded.

Zaki, however, urged the drinks maker to pursue research to find alternative material in order to allay the conscience of Muslims who might be worried.

The council's ruling was welcomed by GlaxoSmithKline, the company producing the drinks.

“Soft drinks are non-alcoholic, we welcome this confirmation and hope that it can reassure those consumers who were concerned,” a spokesman for the company told the BBC News Online said.

Muslims have voiced concerns about the brands as Lucozade contains0 .01% of ethyl alcohol to aid flavoring while the filter used to produce Ribena is made of gelatin, which is derived from pigs.

The fears prompted GlaxoSmithKline to seek a religion opinion from the Muslim Law Council after Muslim consumers stopped buying its products.

It took the British company five months to get the Council’s fatwa.

The British newspaper said an incident from the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) helped Zaki reach his conclusion.

It cited the Prophet’s drinking of liquid produced from soaking raisins in water for several days. The scientists found that the mixture would ferment, producing alcohol, the paper added.

But Sheikh Abdul-Majeed Subh, a prominent Azharite scholar, said that raisins or dates used to be soaked in water for the Prophet, who used to drink it in the first and second days only.

“In the third day, he used to give it to his Companions—and this is an indication that it was not yet fermented. Afterwards if it was fermented, they used to pour it,” IslamOnline.net quoted Subh as saying.

Controversial

There is no anonymity, in effect, on soft drinks containing minute traces of alcohol.

Some scholars totally forbid any percentage of alcohol in drinks, arguing that it permeates the entire drink and change its qualities.

But Dr. Ahmad Sakr, the director of the California-based Foundation For Islamic knowledge, told IOL that scientists and scholars from the Islamic Food Council agree that from0 . 01to0 . 05percentage is insignificant.

The scholars, however, agree that there is nothing wrong in drinks containing animal gelatin.

Dr. Nazih Hammad, a member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy and Fiqh Council of North America, explains: “Because even if it [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”.

“So, the ruling of pork does not apply to it anymore and we are still allowed to use it.”