What is the ruling on drinking medicines and other substances that contain a small percentage of alcohol?

The questioner : O Shaykh, is it true that if the large amount of something is intoxicating, then the small amount is forbidden? Currently, there are two understandings of the hadith, at least in my opinion, so I want to present the issue to you and we need you to resolve it, if Allah wills. The first is that this cup of wine, if one takes a portion of this cup and drinks it all, it would intoxicate him. If he takes a drop from it, then this small amount is forbidden by the text of the hadith. But if this person takes a little of this wine and puts it in a barrel of water, then drinks this water, will the ruling be the same or not? Another question is based on this, which is that now many medicines contain a small percentage of alcohol. Many scholars state that as long as it contains a little alcohol, it is forbidden. But we know that many medicines contain alcohol; perhaps seventy percent or ninety percent of medicines contain this small percentage of alcohol. So the question is: is this considered the small amount that is forbidden if the large amount intoxicates, or not? Then, after explaining that, we want another question regarding things related to medicine, such as the razor and things like narcotics. Then we will ask about anesthesia as well, and they are all related to one topic.

The Shaykh : What Allah willed, do you guess how many questions are in your speech?

The questioner : By Allah, it is a problem. Commenting on some medicines that contain alcohol, there is difficulty in... These medicines, of course, a trustworthy pharmacist told me that these preparations are not necessary. We prepare alcohol and mix it. We prepare mint... And there is the alcohol substance. He tells me that when we put the medicines in the chemical preparations, they will become alcohol. Meaning, he does not bring alcohol alone, for example, a drop, and distill it, and the medicines will become [alcohol]. He said if you ate a large quantity of mint, there would be...

The questioner : In addition to the question, the wine that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) used to drink, for two days, and on the third day he would pour it out or... Meaning, some chemists say that wine, or barley beer or anything else, contains a small percentage of alcohol. So how do we reconcile that the small amount of alcohol, whose large amount intoxicates, applies to it? And based on that, the question arises regarding beer and...

The Shaykh : What Allah willed, are you repeating the question to me?

The questioner : It is written that we want to discuss it from a scientific and medical perspective as well?

The Shaykh : But may Allah reward you, have mercy on my old age.

The questioner : May Allah have mercy on you, O Shaykh, and grant you the joy of seeing His Noble Face.

The Shaykh : What do you want me to memorize, your many questions one by one? In any case, we will provide you with the rule, and perhaps you will derive many answers from it to the questions you asked. Some of them I have memorized, and some I have not. His saying (peace and blessings be upon him) , let us now give an example. If there is a liter of water, containing fifty percent of the intoxicating substance, let us call it alcohol, in this liter, in this mixture, of alcohol fifty percent, this water becomes composed of water plus alcohol, so it becomes intoxicating. But if one drinks a little of it, he is not affected. But if he drinks the amount a person usually drinks, which intoxicates him, he becomes intoxicated. At that time, the small amount of this drink becomes forbidden. But if you have a liter of water containing five grams of alcohol, if the drinker drinks this entire liter, he is not affected and does not become intoxicated. This would be permissible to drink. Is this clear up to here?

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : Ah, we come to: is it permissible for a Muslim to come to this liter of water and pour five grams of alcohol into it on the pretext that these five grams do not make thisThe questioner : or this liter of water intoxicating? The answer is: it is not permissible. Why? Because it is not permissible for you to have the intoxicating substance, which is the mother of wine, which is alcohol. So the process of preparing the intoxicant, this process is not permissible in the religion of Islam. And so we said today, and we are on the seashore as you know, Doctor, we spoke about this topic at length. We said these medicines that are found in pharmacies today, and perhaps most of them contain alcohol, and it is written on them that the alcohol percentage is fifteen, which is... We say these medicines: if the large amount, if the drinker, whether healthy or sick, drinks it, it intoxicates, then it is not permissible to use this drink, because it is intoxicating, even if he takes a spoonful. Here the effect of the previous hadith comes . But if the percentage of alcohol in this medicine, no matter how much a person drinks of it, does not intoxicate, then it is permissible to drink this medicine, even if he drinks a lot of it, as long as it does not intoxicate. This is one thing. But another thing is similar to what I mentioned earlier. Regarding the one who pours five grams of alcohol into a liter of water, we say: these medicines that contain these percentages, which are permissible by Sharia according to the previous detail, of alcohol, it is not permissible for the Muslim pharmacist to prepare such a treatment or such a drink. Rely on not preparing these... in very rare cases. If the Muslim pharmacist wants to prepare a medicine and pour alcohol into it, this is not permissible, because alcohol should not be in the home of a Muslim, in the shop of a Muslim, and it is not permissible to buy it or to manufacture it. And this is a clear matter, because the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) says and so on. The one who wants to prepare a medicine, the pharmacist who wants to prepare a medicine in his shop and pour intoxicating alcohol into it, is one of two things: either he manufactures it himself, distilling the intoxicant from some vegetables or some fruits, or he buys it ready-made. If he buys it ready-made, he falls under the hadith. And if he distills it himself, he falls under the hadith. Likewise, it is not permissible for a Muslim to prepare a medicine with his own hands and pour alcohol into it. But if he buys it ready-made, and the percentage of alcohol in it is small and does not make the large amount of this drink intoxicating, then this is permissible. Otherwise, it is not permissible. This leads us to the answer to the question of Doctor Zahid.
The Shaykh : For example, mint, you say it contains a percentage of alcohol. There is no harm in using mint, and there is no harm in drinking it, pouring it into tea as some people do. But if the pharmacist uses mint instead of alcohol, by a method of not distilling, such that the juice from the mint turns into alcohol, then this is a good thing and a good Sharia exit. But if you distill the mint and turn it into alcohol, then the previously mentioned prohibition applies.

The questioner : O my Shaykh, in two types of alcohol, as the specialists say, there is methyl and ethyl alcohol. One is intoxicating and the other is poisonous. Is the poisonous one, whose small amount is poisonous and lethal, considered forbidden?

The Shaykh : If the matter is as you report, and the report is correct in its chain, then they are not equal, for example. Because you distinguish between the intoxicating and the non-intoxicating. And our discussion is about the alcohol that intoxicates. If the other type, whose name I have not memorized yet, is poisonous and not intoxicating, then it does not fall under what we are dealing with now, like any of the substances. There are, as you know, matters better than us that are classified among narcotics and not classified among intoxicants. So narcotics are not treated as intoxicants, and are not dealt with as intoxicants, because in intoxicants we have the previous hadith . We do not have in narcotics such a text, meaning: "Whatever intoxicates in large quantity, its small quantity is forbidden." We do not have anything of this at all. Rather, here we can say: whatever is harmful of these narcotics is forbidden, relying on his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) . And therefore, we must distinguish between the narcotic and the intoxicant, and give each of them the ruling appropriate to it.