Why Non Active Ingredients Like Gelatin Is Haram
Look. There is a concept called Istislah which means that when there is a change in form or a change in essential properties by a partial or complete chemical change, then the foundational structure doesn’t remain the same and so the original ruling also changes. Using this, we can look at gelatin as having undergone a transformative process that changes its original pork material. Therefore the original ruling of it being haram no longer holds. Another example is vinegar, which is originally alcohol but undergoes synthesis to become vinegar. Vinegar isn’t haram and gelatin isn’t either.
Could you please explain why below ruling is NOT applied as in case of medicine quantity of gelatin or bovine is negligible The European Council for Fatwa issued a fatwa (Number 34, issued in Jumad al-Akhirah 1419 A.H.) stating that any impure substance added to pure food items does not make the food impure if either: (a) the substance underwent a complete chemical change (istihāla), or (b) was totally used up and dissolved in the food item, such that its traces became negligible (istihlāk).
Ok, so Sheikh Yasir Qazi is making some wrong analysis here. Didn’t he say tanning purifies the leather? But the skin of the animal doesn’t really change it’s chemical properties at all or doesn’t stop being skin of a particular animal. Anyone can tell after tanning that this skin belongs to a cow, or a pig or a kangaroo. So to say that gelatine can be seen under a microscope and you can tell which animal it belongs to then shld invalidate the argument presented for leather tanning. Also, the gelatine we are usually concerned with isn’t the kind we produce at home. Ofcourse, that wld be haraam, coz it wouldn’t have gone through istihala. However, the gelatine produced in factories and made into capsules or dried powder goes thru a lot of chemical processes that can not be carried out in our kitchens. So i do believe the gelatine produced in factories does go through istihala