Is it permissible to use products that contain alcohol as an ingredient?

Alcohol is of different types, including the permissible and pure, and the intoxicating and forbidden. The use of a percentage of alcohol in medical substances, perfumes, and foods has become widespread, making it difficult to avoid, and falls under the principle "hardship begets ease."

Jurists have mentioned that if a substance transforms through treatment or immersion in another substance, such that no trace of it remains, then its ruling is removed. Sheikh al-Islam is of the opinion that substances do not remain impure by transformation, and this is the correct view; because they transform into pure substances.

What is added of alcohol to medicine or food is considered very little, consumed within other substances, so it no longer retains its ruling. The meaning of consumption is that a substance mixes with another and loses its properties, like the mixing of a forbidden or impure substance with another pure, غالب (predominant) substance that removes its properties.

Therefore, there is no harm in benefiting from things to which a small amount of alcohol has been added, and its reality has vanished through immersion or transformation, especially if there is no permissible alternative.