Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin
Oh my point of discussion is more general not specific to rennet. To me simply put these scholarly opinions that are making things haram and halal based on where the ingredient (which is chemically separated or exists in a molecular form) is derived from a haram source does not carry weight.
To me these answers merely exist for the sake of giving an answer.
I also have a friend who is a chemist and I had asked him like if you were given a dyglyceride or monoglyceride to analyze, its properties would be the same regardless of its source. And if you were not told its source then it cannot be identified by just analyzing its chemical composition. His answer was pretty much yeah you cannot tell, which in my opinion means that comparing it with its parent product is wrong. For instance pork would be constituted with many of the same chemical or moelcular ingredients that any other meat will have i.e. beek for instance, there may be some differences in constituents or proportions. However separated out, its simply not pork and hence the ruling does not apply.
I have not researched on rennet though but I will. I researched on gelatin and again it is made from the bones and also from vegetable sources but gelatin as a standalone is not pork or its vegetable source. The ruling that things are made haram based on their parent is absurd to me. Maybe for moral conscience we may not consume them but they are not haram in the state they are in.
Peace USResident
I like to look at things simply also. The number of changes to food products are:
Mechanical decomposition
Chemical decomposition
Biochemical decomposition
A mechanical change would be like slicing and dicing meat, putting meat in a bowl of water and the blood in the water would be a mechanical extraction of the blood from the meat, etc
Chemical changes are reactive state changing. Such as acid, boiling, decay, etc
Biochemical changes are microbial attack, enzymitic breakdown, etc
Just by analysing the end product i.e. the nutrient I agree it is impossible to tell what the difference is, however, by boiling pork is it any longer the same as it's uncooked form? No it is not. But the cooked and uncooked form are haram. We can't look at physical similarity or difference of nutritional components as a basis for halal and haram. As Muslims we have a belief in something more than just biological deduction and biochemical difference.
In the case of natural whethering decay of meat it becomes soil and the original nutrients are lost, they breakdown into inorganic minerals, by reducing first usually into very toxic forms of intermediate compounds such as fungi and mould.
Really the mould is alive and converts the nutrients into more of itself.
Eating bread will break it into maltose before we even finish eating it, the stomach will acidically breakdown the physical strands of the bread, but will also biochemically breakdown proteins into amino acids with the pepsin enzyme.
Amino acids are only nutritional because of their natural form, they cannot be manufactured only broken down from living organisms. Laboratory attempts in producing amino acids have failed, because though they can made them in chemical composition the orientation of the atoms in the compounds are incorrect and they cannot be used by the body as nutrients. So enzymitic processes do not denature the nutrient, but chemical process generally do if allowed to continue. Even chemical-mechanical processes can denature the nutrient for example burnt food but then it becomes inedible. As long as it remains edible and nutritional the compounds have not significantly changed.
The basis therefore for haram and halal has to be all those nutrients that can be enzymitcally extracted from the original form. Any other process taken to it's extents can denature the compound. In addition to this there is a spiritual command that has to be upheld. The Islamic fiqhi decisions are not isolated to just the biochemical process.