Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Based on the principle of blocking the doors to transgression in Islamic jurisprudence, non-alcoholic beer is haram.
Responding to the question, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, states:
Muslims need to understand the process of making so-called non-alcoholic beers or wines. The process to make alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers and wines is the same. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers and wines are haram.
Once the beer or the wine is produced, alcohol is extracted from it to make it non-alcoholic. Never is 100 percent of the alcohol removed.
The Islamic principle is that if the whole of a thing is haram, the part of it is also haram. By that principle, non-alcoholic beers and wines are haram.
Our position is based on the premise that
- It is drunk as an alternative to something which is haram, that is, alcoholic beer.
- The culture of wine and beer drinking which the drink entails is non-Islamic and, therefore, haram.
Therefore, based on the principle of blocking the doors to transgression in Islamic jurisprudence, non-alcoholic beer is haram.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.