Please help me. Finding it extremely hard to know what food is halal.

[Aishath]

I am finding things really difficult these days regarding food that is halal. I'm in uk right now and I used to rely a lot on the gmwa foodguide site. Does anyone know how credible this site is? However I then started to learn of the muslim consumer group site and Masha Allah they are very thorough.

But this has definitely made things more difficult for me as the two don't seem to agree on things regarding alcoholic flavouring. I have boxes of cereal in my room that I haven't touched because when I contacted mcg I was told I have to enquire about hidden alcohol. They said the question needs to be phrased like so 'is alcohol used as a solvent in flavor; alcohol is a hidden ingredient or processing aid ingredient of a flavor, it will not appear in the ingredients statement. The knowledge of presence or absence of alcohol in flavor is only known to your QA or Technical service department because they have access to the specification of flavors. In the specification of flavor, your flavor supplier has written the name of solvent or carrier used in that particular flavor. So please request your QA or Technical service department to find out whether alcohol was used or not in the flavor as a solvent. The consumer department can not answer this question because they do not have access to specification of ingredients"

I appreciate how thorough they are being but now I'm questioning every thing. Please please Insha Allah help me. If gmwa says cadbury for instance is halal can I just trust that? I contacted cadbury and asked them this question and they directed me to gmwa site again. I have Kellogg's cereal which is vegetarian, kosher (for some) snd hfa approved... They told me no alcohol is used as a solvent or carrier in flavouring but I was advised by mcg to question them further and ask them the above question. I am waiting for a reply but I wonder if I'm going too far and making life harder for me. Please help me. I need to know who I can trust and by me doubting everything it's causing me to get more waswas in my heart. I am strictly trying to eat only halal but as waswas grows I am slowly facing fewer and fewer items I can eat. If gmwa says something is halal and no alcoholic flavourings is this ok for me to trust.

 

[Abdul Fattah]

Aselam aleykum.
First of all, let it be clear I'm not replying here to tell you what is or isn't halal. That's not my place to do, I'm not qualified for that. What I would like to advice you though, is to be careful with extremism. If you look hard enough, you'll find so called "evidence" against roughly 90% of the available food in the West. For example, here in Belgium, almost all productionmills of flour mix E471 into their flour. Since all distributors buy from the same mills, almost all of them have it. And Since all bakerys buy flour from the same distributers you can be pretty sure that almost every loaf of bread here has E471 in it. And of course, not all E471 is made out of animals. You just can't know, the only alternative is to make your own bread, if you can find flour without additives. Eventually Shaytaan will make things so complicated for you, that you'll be completely stuck. There are so many products which have meet-derivatives or alcohol in it somewhere along the line. Sometimes these ingredients aren't even present any more in the final product. Like in the case of flavoring, it isn't always in the end product. Personally I would find it hard to accept if somewhere to claim that Allah subhana wa ta'ala expects us all to be that vigilant. And there are some hadeeths which show us that things which are haram can become halal. Again, I'm not going to tell you which rule to apply where, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. But there has to be a limit to your responsability.

 

[Woodrow]

Islam is to be easy, not the cause of any hardship.

As we go through life we can only do what we are capable of doing. Those of us who have no control over the full production of our food, from source to finished product have to rely on the honesty of others.

In your present living condition this means to place a good bit of trust in the gmwa food guide and other similar sources. About all you can do and would be expected to do is to seek several good guides and the advice of a local Imam. If none state a food is haram, accept it as being halal and know that they have done a more thorough job of verification than you can personally do.

Do not try to find reason to make the Halal haram.

While you are in the UK you have the opportunity to check what is sold in different halal markets. Check several markets and if you find a product sold in all of them, there should be no reason to doubt it is halal.

While we do have the obligation to conduct a REASONABLE investigation as to if a food is halal, there is no reason to go beyond the reasonable as by doing so we actually increase our chances of error. Unless we happen to be a professional Scholar, chemist, biologist, farmer, grocer and cook, experienced in all facets of the food production.

If we are not experts in all those fields we need to place out trust in the hands of those who are and make du'a that Allaah(swt) will guide us to the correct choice. Place your trust in Allaah(swt) first and then in the hands of those who are doing their best to serve him, such as the makers of the available food lists.

 

[Aishath]

Islam is to be easy, not the cause of any hardship.

As we go through life we can only do what we are capable of doing. Those of us who have no control over the full production of our food, from source to finished product have to rely on the honesty of others.

In your present living condition this means to place a good bit of trust in the gmwa food guide and other similar sources. About all you can do and would be expected to do is to seek several good guides and the advice of a local Imam. If none state a food is haram, accept it as being halal and know that they have done a more thorough job of verification than you can personally do.

Do not try to find reason to make the Halal haram.

While you are in the UK you have the opportunity to check what is sold in different halal markets. Check several markets and if you find a product sold in all of them, there should be no reason to doubt it is halal.

While we do have the obligation to conduct a REASONABLE investigation as to if a food is halal, there is no reason to go beyond the reasonable as by doing so we actually increase our chances of error. Unless we happen to be a professional Scholar, chemist, biologist, farmer, grocer and cook, experienced in all facets of the food production.

If we are not experts in all those fields we need to place out trust in the hands of those who are and make du'a that Allaah(swt) will guide us to the correct choice. Place your trust in Allaah(swt) first and then in the hands of those who are doing their best to serve him, such as the makers of the available food lists.

JazakAllah Khair brother. I have been thinking myself recently that if I am finding this issue so difficult I must be doing things wrong. I used to rely on the GMWA site a lot for a long time as they have quite detailed lists for several brands and if something has alcoholic flavourings, they mark that product. What caused me to have issues with waswas was when I read the following excerpt from the Muslim consumer group site:

Our ulem have no education, experience in food sciene, they even do not know therer are hidden ingredients are part of the food products. They give silly excues such as the alcohol is evaported during baking, alcohol if obtained other tahn grape or date is Halal. Allah gives them taufiq. Whenever you see vanilla or vanilla flavor it means alcohol is used to extract natural vanillin from vanilla beans, some company evaportae to claim it is alcohol free but still it is not Halal. If alcohol touches any Halal ingredients then they will loose their Halal status according MCG ulema.

http://www.muslimconsumergroup.com/q...cat=2&panna=14

This caused me some waswas about what I can then trust with the GMWA site. It caused more difficulties when I started questionning products I already know to be halal. I think I will stick to the GMWA site though from now on instead of making life excessively difficult for me.

 

[Aishath]

Aselam aleykum.
First of all, let it be clear I'm not replying here to tell you what is or isn't halal. That's not my place to do, I'm not qualified for that. What I would like to advice you though, is to be careful with extremism. If you look hard enough, you'll find so called "evidence" against roughly 90% of the available food in the West. For example, here in Belgium, almost all productionmills of flour mix E471 into their flour. Since all distributors buy from the same mills, almost all of them have it. And Since all bakerys buy flour from the same distributers you can be pretty sure that almost every loaf of bread here has E471 in it. And of course, not all E471 is made out of animals. You just can't know, the only alternative is to make your own bread, if you can find flour without additives. Eventually Shaytaan will make things so complicated for you, that you'll be completely stuck. There are so many products which have meet-derivatives or alcohol in it somewhere along the line. Sometimes these ingredients aren't even present any more in the final product. Like in the case of flavoring, it isn't always in the end product. Personally I would find it hard to accept if somewhere to claim that Allah subhana wa ta'ala expects us all to be that vigilant. And there are some hadeeths which show us that things which are haram can become halal. Again, I'm not going to tell you which rule to apply where, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. But there has to be a limit to your responsability.

JazakAllah Khair brother for replying. I think this is where the confusions started to rise. Because sometimes if I had a serious doubt about a company I would contact them and if they said there is no alcohol, I would then assume it to be ok (and of course if it is vegetarian etc). However, this is where the muslim consumer group seemed to differ as they consider if alcohol was used at any point during the process this would not be permissble; including if it had been used as a carrier or solvent for the flavourings used to make the final product. You can see how this starts posing some issues. This was my understanding anyway and i could have misunderstood what the site was saying. Since that website does not deal with UK products, it meant that I could not find a list of halal foods on thier site and instead started questioning almost everything.

I do need to understand that there is a limit to how much I can do and I think I also need to really learn to trust others. Like i said, I was quite happy relying on the GMWA site until I read all this from another site. But without knowing for sure the GMWA site is wrong (as they also use the opinion of scholars I believe), then I guess I don't need to go to extremes and question their listings.

 

[Woodrow]

JazakAllah Khair brother for replying. I think this is where the confusions started to rise. Because sometimes if I had a serious doubt about a company I would contact them and if they said there is no alcohol, I would then assume it to be ok (and of course if it is vegetarian etc). However, this is where the muslim consumer group seemed to differ as they consider if alcohol was used at any point during the process this would not be permissble; including if it had been used as a carrier or solvent for the flavourings used to make the final product. You can see how this starts posing some issues. This was my understanding anyway and i could have misunderstood what the site was saying. Since that website does not deal with UK products, it meant that I could not find a list of halal foods on thier site and instead started questioning almost everything.

I do need to understand that there is a limit to how much I can do and I think I also need to really learn to trust others. Like i said, I was quite happy relying on the GMWA site until I read all this from another site. But without knowing for sure the GMWA site is wrong (as they also use the opinion of scholars I believe), then I guess I don't need to go to extremes and question their listings.

I believe you have just given the best possible answer to your own question.

Always remember your own limitations and acknowledge you can do no more than what you are capable of. Use reasonable caution and avoid that which is obviously haram and trust in the expertise of the professionals (food guides) to guide you in the choices you do not have the ability to verify yourself.

 

[Aishath]

JazakAllah Khair brother.

Can I also ask about medicine? I know that medicine with haram ingredients is generally not permitted right but dose this also refer to creams and ointments we use? I am specifically referring to Daktarin Aktiv which is a cream for athlete's foot. I found out from the company that it does not have any animal derived ingredients and it does not list ethanol alcohol as an ingredient at the back. However, when it comes to medicine, some of the names just don't make much sense to me. Like I have been trying to understand what oleoyl macroglycerides is without too much success. So how do we go about with these matters? I have started to use this product now as based on my understanding I am not sure if it does have ethanol alcohol and the infection is getting rather bad. But is this wrong for me to do so?

EDIT: This is what I found out but I just find it hard to understand what I am reading here.

Oleoyl macrogolglycerides are mixtures of monoesters, diesters and triesters of glycerol and monoesters and diesters of macrogols. They are obtained by partial alcoholysis of an unsaturated oil mainly containing triglycerides of oleic acid using macrogol with a mean relative molecular mass between 300 and 400 or by esterification of glycerol and macrogol with unsaturated fatty acids or by mixing glycerol esters and condensates of ethylene oxide with the fatty acids of this unsaturated oil.

Is ethylene oxide a cause for concern here?

 

[Woodrow]

JazakAllah Khair brother.

Can I also ask about medicine? I know that medicine with haram ingredients is generally not permitted right but dose this also refer to creams and ointments we use? I am specifically referring to Daktarin Aktiv which is a cream for athlete's foot. I found out from the company that it does not have any animal derived ingredients and it does not list ethanol alcohol as an ingredient at the back. However, when it comes to medicine, some of the names just don't make much sense to me. Like I have been trying to understand what oleoyl macroglycerides is without too much success. So how do we go about with these matters? I have started to use this product now as based on my understanding I am not sure if it does have ethanol alcohol and the infection is getting rather bad. But is this wrong for me to do so?

EDIT: This is what I found out but I just find it hard to understand what I am reading here.

Oleoyl macrogolglycerides are mixtures of monoesters, diesters and triesters of glycerol and monoesters and diesters of macrogols. They are obtained by partial alcoholysis of an unsaturated oil mainly containing triglycerides of oleic acid using macrogol with a mean relative molecular mass between 300 and 400 or by esterification of glycerol and macrogol with unsaturated fatty acids or by mixing glycerol esters and condensates of ethylene oxide with the fatty acids of this unsaturated oil.

Is ethylene oxide a cause for concern here?

:wa:

Ethylene oxide is in the ether class or chemicals. Only concern would be if you tried to breathe is as it is highly poisonous. However the compounds made from it are harmless. Sort of like common table salt which is a naturally occurring compound of 2 deadly elements, chlorine gas and the metal sodium. Ethylene oxide is not related to drinking alcohol except for the similarity in the molecular structure both being carbohydrates.

 

[Abz2000]

Islam is to be easy, not the cause of any hardship.

As we go through life we can only do what we are capable of doing. Those of us who have no control over the full production of our food, from source to finished product have to rely on the honesty of others.

I Had similar issues before I moved out of the uk,
Couldn't buy so many foods simply due to pork or alcohol content, many chip shop owners don't even know that spirit vinegar (in their ketchup) is an alcoholic product and have huge halal signs.
I'm far from perfect but this verse was a huge factor in my move.


إِنَّ الَّذينَ تَوَفّىٰهُمُ المَلٰئِكَةُ ظالِمى أَنفُسِهِم قالوا فيمَ كُنتُم ۖ قالوا كُنّا مُستَضعَفينَ فِى الأَرضِ ۚ قالوا أَلَم تَكُن أَرضُ اللَّهِ وٰسِعَةً فَتُهاجِروا فيها ۚ فَأُولٰئِكَ مَأوىٰهُم جَهَنَّمُ ۖ وَساءَت مَصيرًا

When angels take the souls of those who die in sin against their souls, they say: \"In what (plight) Were ye?\" They reply: \"Weak and oppressed Were we in the earth.\" They say: \"Was not the earth of Allah spacious enough for you to move yourselves away (From evil)?\" Such men will find their abode in Hell,- What an evil refuge! -


إِلَّا المُستَضعَفينَ مِنَ الرِّجالِ وَالنِّساءِ وَالوِلدٰنِ لا يَستَطيعونَ حيلَةً وَلا يَهتَدونَ سَبيلًا

Except those who are (really) weak and oppressed - men, women, and children - who have no means in their power, nor a guide for their way.

فَأُولٰئِكَ عَسَى اللَّهُ أَن يَعفُوَ عَنهُم ۚ وَكانَ اللَّهُ عَفُوًّا غَفورًا

For these, there is hope that Allah will forgive: For Allah doth blot out (sins) and forgive again and again.


۞ وَمَن يُهاجِر فى سَبيلِ اللَّهِ يَجِد فِى الأَرضِ مُرٰغَمًا كَثيرًا وَسَعَةً ۚ وَمَن يَخرُج مِن بَيتِهِ مُهاجِرًا إِلَى اللَّهِ وَرَسولِهِ ثُمَّ يُدرِكهُ المَوتُ فَقَد وَقَعَ أَجرُهُ عَلَى اللَّهِ ۗ وَكانَ اللَّهُ غَفورًا رَحيمًا

He who forsakes his home in the cause of Allah, finds in the earth Many a refuge, wide and spacious: Should he die as a refugee from home for Allah and His Messenger, His reward becomes due and sure with Allah: And Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

Quran 4:87-100

It's not easy and many governments still serve the enemies of Allah,
But it's nice to walk outside and feel Islam around you, hear salamz from almost everyone, and hear the adhan blaring out on the loudspeakers, not even have to think of the word halal when buying food or stopping at a restaurant, and the best part is being able to take your kids out without shielding their eyes every time a pair of bared legs appear or you walk past an advert for special k or marks and spencer underwear.

May Allah make the path of truth easier for us to follow since we mess up even when it's easy.

 

[YusufNoor]

I am finding things really difficult these days regarding food that is halal. I'm in uk right now and I used to rely a lot on the gmwa foodguide site. Does anyone know how credible this site is? However I then started to learn of the muslim consumer group site and Masha Allah they are very thorough.

But this has definitely made things more difficult for me as the two don't seem to agree on things regarding alcoholic flavouring. I have boxes of cereal in my room that I haven't touched because when I contacted mcg I was told I have to enquire about hidden alcohol. They said the question needs to be phrased like so 'is alcohol used as a solvent in flavor; alcohol is a hidden ingredient or processing aid ingredient of a flavor, it will not appear in the ingredients statement. The knowledge of presence or absence of alcohol in flavor is only known to your QA or Technical service department because they have access to the specification of flavors. In the specification of flavor, your flavor supplier has written the name of solvent or carrier used in that particular flavor. So please request your QA or Technical service department to find out whether alcohol was used or not in the flavor as a solvent. The consumer department can not answer this question because they do not have access to specification of ingredients"

I appreciate how thorough they are being but now I'm questioning every thing. Please please Insha Allah help me. If gmwa says cadbury for instance is halal can I just trust that? I contacted cadbury and asked them this question and they directed me to gmwa site again. I have Kellogg's cereal which is vegetarian, kosher (for some) snd hfa approved... They told me no alcohol is used as a solvent or carrier in flavouring but I was advised by mcg to question them further and ask them the above question. I am waiting for a reply but I wonder if I'm going too far and making life harder for me. Please help me. I need to know who I can trust and by me doubting everything it's causing me to get more waswas in my heart. I am strictly trying to eat only halal but as waswas grows I am slowly facing fewer and fewer items I can eat. If gmwa says something is halal and no alcoholic flavourings is this ok for me to trust.

i reckon that i'm an extremists...

here's an idea, don't buy cereal. have eggs for breakfast, not factory farm caged eggs, but organic, cage free, grain fed, non hormonal eggs. don't buy a single thing from Kellogg. find some nice bread, with as little wheat in it as possible. some tea, organic stevia and organic, non bgh milk, along with some nice butter with those same qualities.

buy some nice rice. brown and organic. some organic lentils and some garlic, onions and peppers.

buy whatever veggies you want, organic is better.

now, you don't have to call anyone or worry about anything.

not sure about chocolate. it is good for you. find a nice health food store and get the rawest, simplest and organic that they have. don't buy anything from Cadbury.

worries over.

see, i made it simple.

relax. have a cup of tea,

ma salaama

 

[Aishath]

Caan i just ask if this would be enough checking...?

if the product says vegetarian and i email the company and they say no alcohol is in the product, no alcohol has been used as a solvent or carrier for the flavouring. muslim consumer group stresses a lot more in-depth info, but i'm wondering if this would be enough to then assume this is a halal product...?

 

[YusufNoor]

vegetarian isn't by itself OK. alot of vegetarian stuff has GMOs and chemicals in it. that's why i gave up and went certified organic. i won't buy "halal" meat from Australia either. not saying it isn't halal, but no way to know for sure. go local and natural. find a halal store that buys local. if you stick to food the way Allah intended, it is as easy as pie. leave packaged premade corporate junk behind you and life becomes simple. stock up on rice and some lentils, buy the rest as fresh as you can. give up on pesky drinks too, a lot of poisonous, cancer causing ingredients. even wheat is poisonous now. bread can give you diabetes on top of that! i made a big switch 3 months ago, lost 30 lbs! i ate a non organic apple 2 weeks ago, got sick the next day! ate some angeera, put on 5lbs and a few inches on my waste. got weighed at the hospital today, lowest weight in 25 years! Alhamdulillah.

we've been brainwashed into thinking crap is good. it isn't. nor is it good for you. why do you think health care costs are the highest in human existence? it is simple, we are being poisoned. i rather doubt that poisoning yourself is halal. it doesn't seem logical that it would be.

ma salaama