Arts and Culture

ALCOHOL - Cultural Ignorance vs Islamic Knowledge

Umar Luqman, United Kingdom, Sunday 16 March 2008

Mr Rehman is a shopkeeper who recently received a lot of media coverage because he threw out all the packets of crisps from his shop because they contained traces of alcohol. There is even an Islamic council presiding over the issue. Those of you that have taken the side of Mr Rehman and stood up to his cause, are you aware that alcohol is used to produce many of the foods that we eat? In fact, alcohol occurs naturally in many of the fruit that we eat (in significantly higher concentrations than that found in crisps).

This knowledge has been known for many years. So why hasn't a lot of fuss been made about this subject before? Because the alcohol that we consume is of such a low quantity that we do not even know that it is there when it enters our mouth. In fact the fatwa that prohibits the consuming of alcohol refers to brewed alcohol that is drunk for pleasure, intoxicates our minds and distortes our reality leading to haram behaviour. The ingestion of crisps produced with alcohol does not fit in this category in anyway whatsoever. Why are so many of us so ignorant about our beliefs?

An innocent aid worker almost got herself killed because some sincere muslim children decided to use the name of our beloved Prophet to name a teddy bear. I commend and respect practicing brothers and sisters, BUT WHY SUCH STUPIDITY??

The ingestion of brewed alcohol for pleasure falls into the same category as the injection or ingestion of any substance that would poison our health, distort our reality and/or enhance out base desires. All of which are haram. Drinking alcohol is effectively a drug, where as alcohol in crisps is simply a food additive to preserve the quality of the snack.

This is not to slander any community, but the Pakistani community in the UK (the biggest muslim community) is very large and very influential on Islamic personal development in the UK, whereby many people have been taught ghettoized or cultural knowledge that often stem from poor revision of Islam from the source. That is, The Quran and Hadiths relating the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh).

Most muslims are very proud of who they are and are not afraid of criticism from secular society, a good thing. But we must guard against arrogance and complacency, whereby we practice islam very poorly and end up distorting the image of Islam in a very negative and unsophisticated way. In the interests of dowah, this issue is essentially important.

The religion provided for us by Allah is very sophisticated, but unfortunately the Ummah practices it so badly most of the time that an independent observer is unlikely to think that there is anything sophisticated about Islam whatsoever!!

Umar Luqman