Re: gelatin
I have a few questions. My knowledge from chemistry in college is crude:
In organic chemistry the class of compounds classified as alcohols has the following empirical formula:CnH2n-1OH
C2H5OH (ethanol) is the alcohol we drink, and methanol (CH3OH) and other higher alcohols (pentanol and butanol) are mostly toxic and poisonous. Islam prohibits drinking of alcohol or anything that intoxicates you. What's the ruling on usage of higher alcohols for medicinal purposes? What about SD-alcohols (denatured alcohols) in perfumes and colognes?
Nescio brought up an interesting point in relation to L-cysteine. L-cysteine is an amino acid (one of the 20 essestial building blocks of protein, and the L is just an steroisomer), which is manufactured in nature in human hair, animal hooves and bird feathers. Bakeries use that as a reducing agent. (chinese women's hair is mostly used)
Rasheed mentioned that it is haram if obtained from human hair. My question is all animals die and degrade into basic elemental forms again. When a human body decomposes, all its nitrogen, vitamins, minerals, iron, water are released back into nature. For all i know i could be drinking someone's piss right now, so why such ruling in place if something at a molecular level is obtained from human hair?
If that is the case then we should not be eating vegetables and fruits which might be using the same elements from decomposed body as a products of the carbon cycle, nitrogen-fixation cycle, and water cycle?