Fatimah Zahra Karim wrote:Unfortunately, qamar, my lesson seems to have been wasted on you. Open an Arabic dictionary that lists words by common roots and you'll find khamr and khamira under the same root, khamara.
Yeast on its own is not haram. And it is NOT alcohol (as supposed by sis sadiqa). It is, in fact, used as dietary supplement to provide the B-vitamins and it contains about half its weight in amino acids. A handful of yeast is totally permissible. However, if you mix yeast with water and a carbohydrate, the yeast starts respiring, using the carbs as its energy source. The end products of this process are carbon dioxide (which makes the dough rise, exactly what we want) and the notorious by-product, ethanol (the common drinking alcohol, which we don't want). That is established fact. So whether or not bread contains a small % of alcohol is not the question here. The question, rather, is whether or not such small quantities of alcohol are permissible.
Coming back to the question at hand, as pointed out above, azam uses artificial flavourants and so, not having undergone the fermentation process, would not contain any more alcohol than the juice you make at home.
Muhammad Mahdi wrote:sadika wrote:muhammad: wat is your qualification? how many yrs have u studied science n islamic laws? perhaps once u list these we can decide if we shud take ur word against that of syd sistani. seriously, on wat basis r u challenging his fatwa?
I have not challenged his fatwa. I merely mentioned the different ways his rulings about alcoholic drinks all inherently use yeast for production of alcohol.
There is no need for asking for my qualifications. I am a layman when it comes to religious matters but I believe I am more informed in the scientific aspect of this than the esteemed mujtahid.
r u sayin yeast is alcohol? and somehw sistani missed tat glarin fact?
I mentioned this before but I will explain again.
Yeast is a fungi. Like all living things it respires to produce energy. If yeast respires in the absence of oxygen, then alcohol and carbon dioxide is produced. The net-like bubbly appearance of bread is due to this CO2.
Yeast occurs naturally as well, hence home-made juices can have small percentages of alcohol as well due to natural fermentation taking place. Yeast is also present on the human body, an overgrowth of which may lead to yeast infections.
As you can see, yeast is not alcohol but it is used to produce alcohol. We know all this because we understand the chemistry behind it. Many more are oblivious to all this ( as were you I presume) and hence it is not such a glaring fact.
he just seems confused how a thing that can be used to make alcohol can have any other state where it is halaal.
I am not confused about yeast. There are some kinds of yeast which have been deactivated (biologically inactive) which are unable to respire and produce alcohol. These are of nutritional value and quite delicious with a nice 'chees'y flavor.
brthr mahdi, since you seem to be aware of how and when yeast becomes alcohol for our benefit can you tell us the scientific conditions that are required for yeast to become alcohol, say to an extent of 0.05% as you mentioned is found in daily bread.
Yeast respires to produce alcohol in the presence of a carbohydrate. The carbohydrate is broken down to get glucose which is then converted to obtain carbon dioxide and ethanol(alcohol)
In bread most of the ethanol is evaporated due to baking but upto 0.5% can remain in the bread.
For your own sake, you can test this out by putting some yeast into dough. After a few hours, you will be able to smell the alcohol in the dough.
my brother and sister in faith (fatimah and muhammad)
thank you for your lesson in root words. I remember it very well from my arabic 101. however, you have fallen short by stopping at looking for proof of muhammads claim about the root word of khamira. have you made any effort to disprove the common root of daram and daru?
my comment on the root word was to make light of the fact that a common root word does not mean the same laws should apply. an example is 'masjidul haraam'. does that mean the masjid is haraam?
you both claim in depth knowledge of the chemical process of respiration (aerobic and anaerobic) of yeast during the baking process. muhammad claims to know more about the process than the grand ulema. you both also claim that it is a fact that alcohol (or more precisely ethanol C2H6O) is present in bread. and you claim this to be such a fact as not to be arguable. in other words, you are now debatting whether the ulemas know this or if they have allowed it unwittingly, since alcohol in any quantity however small is haraam to consume.
to test your knowledge about the process and about what happens to the ethanol in the bread-dough please answer the following questions for me.
1. during fermentation (respiration) of yeast (more specifically bakers yeast or Saccharomyces cerevisiae) at what stage is ethanol produced? Is this before the production of carbon dioxide or much much after?
2. during the bread-baking process, is the process of fermentation allowed to continue to such a time that ethanol is produced? or is it stopped much earlier?
3. what is the boiling point of ethanol?
4. assuming that the dough that was made using fermented yeast contains traces of ethanol and then the dough is molded and put in the oven to bake, what is the temperature that is used to bake bread?
( i assume you know where i am going with this by now?)
5. considering #3 if there was any ethanol in the dough would it survive the baking process with the temperatures used in #4?
i think its highly naive to believe that the Grand Ulema have not considered what you have considered.