A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Society Religion & Philosophy
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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Well here is the old thread you can check out:
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/showpost.php?p=4716530&postcount=9

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

I don't need to ask any questions to him........here.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Peace cricketplay

Thank you for the clarification. I take back the definition of it being haram, however, I have a few questions which I believe I am qualified to pose due to my being from a chemical bioprocess engineering background.

I understand that you posted a link from another forum a discussion posted as a result of other people in a dialogue.

The reply that has been structured by Shaykh Ilyas is a confusing one for me:

The three opinions that are listed are not coherent in context.

First opinion: The first opinion is not really a deveoped analytical opinion. It is based on the assumption that rennet is haram and using haram to make cheese is haram. I can say that this is not a constructive opinion, because it has not been asertained why rennet may or may not be haram.

Second opinion: This is not really a whole opinion it is only part of it. It is saying , I think, that the rennet is haram, but since it is not part of the product, the product itself is halal. This is quite questionable as never in a bioprocess does complete separation of rennet occur from the product, there is always a residual amount left over. So if rennet is indeed haram, then the residue should therefore make the cheese haram.

Also, how does this apply to curdling process used in chocolates? Is it the same thing?

Third opinion: There are more questions to ask about the cheese that the prophet Muhammad (SAW) ate, i.e. not only was the rennet made from animals, but also whether rennet was used in the first place. Things like melons also secrete agents that coagulate and curdle proteins and some agents can exist in the air also, i.e. natural curdling can take place just as natural fermentation can take place. Other than this the most important question to me would be if animal products were used in the cheese that the prophet Muhammad (SAW) ate was this animal slaughtered in the halal way or not, because getting to it’s stomach would mean that it would need to be slaughtered.

Experiment! You can all make your own cheese, cottage cheese to be precise, just by simply warming up some milk and squirting in a dash of lemon juice. Vegetarian rennet is called Mucor miehei and can be brought in most big supermarkets.

The hanafi school opinion is not the opinion of Imam Abu Hanifah I just want to make that clear. There have been studies and they still continue today. However, we are hopefully not talking just about the opinion of one school from one establsihment in the UK.

The idea that rennet is an enzyme and is not part of the blood circulatory process, because of something having life in it and it does not have blood therefore it cannot have life in it is not a substantial analysis either. Saliva for example can be easily extracted without harming an animal, but the life of the animal as a whole is what the life pertains to, muscles do not have life in themselves either you see, it is the entire animal that has life in it. Due to the fact that we must get to the stomach by killing the animal this to me makes things very different from extracting enzymes from saliva.

However, I want to retract the initial statement of mars being haram as there are clearly more opinions, the answer given however, is not presenting the full argument and I believe the people here have a right to see it from the perspective of a Muslim who understands the intrinsic bioprocesses angle.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Please can someone tell what rennet is called in Urdu. Thanks

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Scholars do not understand chemical processes. Yaar this enslavement to scholars is what has numbed the minds of the muslim ummah. Matters are not as complicated as we think they are. Nothing against scholars but todays scholars are not versed in everything as earlier scholars used to be because fields of knowledge had not become so vast as they are today.

If you do it to be on the safe side I can understand that.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

ASA

Br. Psyah good to know you are from a chemical background. Maybe you could convince me otherwise. It would be nice to have a discussion with you.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Psyah bro, the opinions do not mention that rennet is haram rather they say it is halal. The article I posted includes questions (which lists 3 opinions: Q1, Q2, Q3) but Shaykh answers each opinion (ie. A1, A2, A3)

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Anyone?

GS in your dream
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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Peace USResident

My intention is not to convince you of the caution I am using with rennet, rather just highlighting exactly what you have stated in your earlier post, is that the scholarly opinions that have been posted are for me obviously absent from the depth in the scientific context. The argument seem either vague, incomplete or hastily constructed in order to portray an opinion rather than an assessment.

I tried to give a balanced picture by commenting on the fallacious assumptions in the given opinions. Fallacious because it seems they are coming from an information vacuum.

For example only a generalised view states that the rennet is not in the product, but a technical view is contrary to that.

Now that we have determined that it needs to be determined whether rennet can or cannot be called haram. The only answer to this in the post given by bro. cricketplaya is the one that talks of the thing 'having life'.

The hadith quoted about the prophet Muhammad (SAW) is not proof for or against rennet as cheese can and a lot of soft cheeses are made without rennet. So to see these ahadith there makes me wonder why the scholars have used them to support the halal rennet argument. The only conclusion I see here is that an assumption is being made about all cheese is made from rennet, therefore I suspect the level of scientific or technical ground work that has been done to formulate the answer, or the answer is styled with a preconceived opinion. Allahu'alim. I am not saying this is intentional, just that it is not very convincing when we can see holes in the argument.

Also, the answer only quotes the hanafi school opinion. This may be enough for some people. It may have been enough for me, but the whole argument being not entriely coherent has made me a bit cautious.

However, still note I am not anymore calling haram-slaughtered halal-animal based rennet haram because of this opinion.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

bachray kay pait say haasil kardah mayah jis main doodh pharnay kee salah-eeyat hotee heay....
is mayah say paneer bhee banaya jaata heay..
That is the closest I can come to in Urdu...

cheese rennet* n. *پنیرماوا

rennet* n. *
1. جما ہوا دودھ جو اکثر بچھڑے کے پیٹ میں ہوتا ہے۔ چستہ۔ پنیر مایہ۔ مایہٴ شیر۔ جامن۔ بستہ شیر۔

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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.

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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.

As thick as a sphinx?
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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

JAK Br. Psyah

The mechanical and chemical or reactive state change I understand. Though little unclear about the Biochemical process (I'm software person so bare with me). What is the difference between the chemical and biochemical process. Please explain it in terms of what the end result is from both processes. Does the chemical process decompose the subject into its different constituents or just changes its state without loosing its constituents e.g. fermentation.

And does the bio-chemical process decompose the subject into its constituents? Do you see my confusion.

Your last paragraph its not clear to me. Are you saying that if the nutrient or constituent (as correct me if nutrient and constituent are different things under the context of our disucssion) can be separated biochemically then in your opinion it is no longer the same as its parent source or we cannot apply to same ruling to it as we would to its parent source?

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Peace USResident

Biochemical decomposition would include any process in a digestive system, or natural microbial system such as fermentation retaining the nutritional qualities of the food product. Chemical processes usually destroy nutrients; nutrients are constituents in a specialised form, the general term constituent is anything nutritional or otherwise. Fermentation is a process that occurs due to biochemical activity. Other than providing broken down nutrients the fermentation process also adds harmful agents, such as ethanol into the mix.

Chemical decomposition may or may not lead to harmful products, for example burnt food is high in carcinogenic compounds, however, cooked food merely removes some calorific value, but at the same time enhances taste and makes the nutrients easier on the digestive system to extract and utilise, this is called bioavailability. Cooking the right food in the right way determines the optimal bioavailability.

Chemical decomposition doesn't therefore make things haram as cooking is chemical but note the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) avoided burnt food and this makes good biological sense.

Mechanical decomposition also doesn't make things haram or halal as food is often chopped up before eaten.

Biochemical processes however such as fermentation do make certain things haram. However, generally speaking even these do not make things haram.

So the definition of haram is not what the food consists with, rather it has to be based on the original form. Because then one can argue that pork may be haram but cooked pork is not, etc ... where do you draw the line?

This is where: Total chemical decomposition. When the corpse of, say, a pig rots and joins with the ground and over it some vegetable plants sprout and use the minerals from the matter that used to be part of the pig, then the once haram matter becomes halal, because the plants are halal. Soil does contain some organic matter, but the matter absorbed by the plants are essentially inorganic. This means that they have lost their nutritional value at the stage of becoming soil. To look at the semi-digested compounds for differences and not noticing the difference of proteins that have come from pigs as opposed to those proteins that have come from plants or fish, etc is a false basis for deeming something halal or haram.

In short the food cycle determines when something is halal or haram. It is not when the nutrients are going to be utilised by the body rather it is when the material returns to the ground ready to be reabsorbed by some plant matter. When plant matter is being considered the once inorganic becomes organic and continues to be so, until it goes through total chemical decomposition.

As far as I understand biochemical decomposition will not produce inorganic biproducts, but chemical decomposition does. The specific biochemical processes that produce alcohol make the halal haram essentially because this is what Allah (SWT) has defined, after this the wisdom we can fathom in it is that alcohol is toxic.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

JAK Br. Psyah

I think I understand the food life cycle process and the part that biochemical processes do not necessarily produce inorganic compounds.

Let me ask some more to help my own understanding. Since I have touched on this before. Say we have a monoglyceride, one derived from a beef source and one from a pork source. Is the monoglyceride any different from the two sources? If not and we say that the one from the pork source is haram, what would be the reason for it when it has no distinguishing qualities of pork left in it. Its a constituent in its own right now.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

Peace USResident

Pork ki to door ki baat hai .... Let's make your question even more constricted to give you the most emphatic answer I can.

Instead of considering a monoglyceride let's consider two slabs of beef, one is from a cow that has been knife slaughtered with the blood allowed to drain, the other has been slaughtered in the same way except that the takbeer/dua has been read over it. There will be no visible macroscopic nor microscopic difference between the two slabs of meat, one will be haram the other will be halal.

The same analogy should be applicable for the monoglycerides. I hope this helps. Remember the monoglycerides are biochemically derived from the source and the only way a haram thing become halal is when it goes out of it's organic form in to the inorganic and then back in to the organic. This way pork can never be halal due to the Qur'anic injunction, and beef will only be halal if the correct rites are undertaken during slaughter.

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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

JAK.

Actually I would tend to disagree with the example of one slaughtered with Takbir and the other without provided one was slaughtered by a muslim and the other by people of the book. The Quranic ayat that states the food from people of the book is allowed has no ifs and buts attached to it. I have confirmed this from many Arabic people who understand the Quranic arabic. My wife is also Arabic so often I don't have to look far. There is no extrapolation to that ayat or dual meaning in its words.

Even from my own analysis of the ayat that states any meat that has been slaughtered with any name other than Allah SWT is haram is very specific in defining the situation. You will need to read it again and again to get its point. Its talking specifically about ritual meat, its not as general as most people take it to be. Its prohibiting meat on which a name other than Allah SWT has been pronounced (which is ritual meat), it is not prohibiting meat on which no name has been pronounced or meat that has been slaughtered by People of the book for food consumption.

The Quran or the ahadith do not mention how the People of the Book used to slaughter their meat though we assume that they said Allah SWT name but it is not known for sure nor is there any evidence in our scriptures of such a practice. The ayat about allowing meat from the poeple of the book would be in sharp conflict with the one that prohibits any meat slaughtered if Allah SWT name were not pronounced on it because there are no conditions attached to the ayat which allows meat from the people of the book.

I think I do understand the bio/chemical process now as you've done a good job explaining it to me. I would agree now that if it came from a pork source then it is haram (it is still organic in nature) however I would not say it is haram if it came from a beef source simply because I do not think the beef slaughtered by the people of the book is haram.

Jamat e Islami: The enemy within
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Re: A Mars a day helps you work, rest and sin

:lifey: :yahoo: …but we’ll have to wait for the next batch.

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:slight_smile: