Mustafa Khattab – Bitcoin & Gelatin Halal Or Haram
AI: Summary ©
The importance of certain church topics in their worship is highlighted, including the number of gelatin used and the use of organs for survival after death. The speakers emphasize the importance of avoiding mistakes and avoiding giving personal information without permission. The speakers also discuss rules of divorce, including the need for personal choice and the importance of removing life support for those affected by the topic. The speakers stress the importance of avoiding giving too many false arguments during divorce and focusing on the positive side of divorce.
AI: Summary ©
I bear witness that there is none worthy
of our worship except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And I bear witness that Muhammad
is the seal of the prophets and the
final messenger to all of humanity.
Whoever Allah
guides, there is none to misguide,
and whoever Allah
leads astray, there is none to guide aright.
Today
inshaAllah,
just as we did a few months ago
and last year,
every now and then I'm gonna put together
some questions that I usually get from the
community, brothers and sisters.
So good people come,
So everyone comes with a question. So if
if a question is very common and and
this is a common concern, and and people
ask the same question,
I like to put these questions together and
share them with you with the answer
So just a small disclosure before I give
the answers, and I share the questions with
you.
These are not my fatwas, so don't shoot
me. I'm just relating to you what some
of the fatwa councils,
have said about certain issues.
So today, with that being said, there are
5 things that I'm gonna cover very quickly
in the, 20 minutes we have.
We'll talk about the ruling of, gelatin. Everyone
has to deal with,
gelatin at some certain point when they go
shopping, you know, yogurt and cheese and different
things. Yeah. There's usually, gelatin, and they don't
know what to do. And number 2, organ
donations.
Sometimes, you know, you know, you you get
the question,
when you apply for your health health card,
or you go for, you know, to get
your driver's license, and they will ask you,
would you like to donate your organs?
And there are some issues with this, but
I'm gonna explain, Insha'Allah.
And number 3,
if someone is life on life support, I
get these questions,
from some brothers and sisters if they go,
they go through this issue.
Can we remove the life support from a
Muslim patient?
And, so this is 3. Number 4,
conditional divorce.
If someone says to his wife, if you
go to Tim Hortons, I'm gonna divorce you.
Does it count as divorce if she goes
or not? And finally,
the cryptocurrency,
Bitcoin.
Now everyone is excited.
So,
the first one with regards to gelatin,
there are 3 different types of gelatin in
the market.
I'm gonna give you the introduction before you
shoot me, then I'm gonna give you the
conclusion at the end.
So, there are 3 types of gelatin. The
first one that comes from plants like soya
beans, and this one should be halal.
And number 2, the, gelatin from,
you know, chicken and beef.
And in this case, I know there's difference
opinion.
Some say halal, some say halal, but at
the end of the day,
the chosen opinion is it should be halal.
It should be.
And number 3, pork.
Gelatin from pork, and we don't know if
it is,
chemically changed or not because sometimes they change
it chemically, and they say if something changes
chemically,
then it should be halal. But we're gonna
go through some details
So there's a brother,
He's in the intensive care unit in Lebanon,
and he's asking for the family is asking
for your dua, so we ask Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala to give him shifa, and make
it easy for him and the family, and
to give him a long and healthy life.
So, in sharia, if something changes chemically,
then the ruling changes.
So basically, if we have einah, grapes,
If you change the einah, the grapes into
alcohol,
become halam.
If you change the alcohol into vinegar,
it becomes
the chosen
So the ruling is not based on what
it was, but based on what it is
right now.
So in this case,
if they take it directly from the pork,
then it is haram like lard, and fats,
and so on and so forth. If they
change it chemically,
then the ruling changes based on changes based
on what I said.
How do we know if it is from
soybeans, if it is from chicken, if it's
from pork,
change chemically or not. We have no clue
most of the time, and and this is
a big problem. Like, if you go to
Costco or Walmart and you ask the guy
or you go to Oceans,
you know, they have no clue. They tell
you we're just selling it, we didn't make
it, so don't ask me. And they tell
you, oh, here it is, a phone number
or email, send an email and sometimes you
get a you don't get a response, or
they keep you on hold for 5 hours,
you know, they don't know.
But Alhamdulillah,
here in Mississauga or in the GTA, we
don't have a problem.
Because halalazabihan,
halalalternatives
are all over the place. You don't have
to worry if it's from pork,
chemically changed, if if it's from chicken or
beef. You don't have to go through this.
Right? So
They have about 20 restaurants, all of them
to the best of them in all.
We don't have a problem.
But if you go to the the territories
in the north, or you go to New
Finland, now you have a problem because you
don't have a lot of Zabeel Halal alternatives.
So here, the good thing,
like, if you go back home to our
countries, back home, I'm not gonna name countries,
you go to the store, it's only one
brand
of,
you know, cheese, or one brand of yogurt.
There's even one
ruler forever, you know? There's only one option,
we have one option. Even in the election,
when you get the ballot it says, vote
yes or yes.
But here in Alhamdulillah, we have a lot
of alternatives, it's very flexible here. You go
to Walmart, you go to Costco,
one, you know, type like cheese or anything,
you will find 15 different brands. And here,
you can find halal options, you can find
halal options, and you got even vitamins. There
is a new brand coming up, which is
halal. They put halal or Muslim on the,
on the package.
You know, we don't have a problem here.
If you don't have halal, look for kosher
for example, which typically should be halal, 99%
halal.
But again, as I said last time, not
every household is halal because in kosher,
for the Ehud, it is permissible for them
to use alcohol when they cook.
So but typically
99 kosher 99%
halal except,
if they use alcohol when they cook. So
again, it is easy, it's not a problem.
Look for a halal alternative,
or at least the one with the k
or u sign, they should make it halal
InshaAllah. The second one, organ donations.
This is also an issue for some people,
like I've heard some cases
where someone comes to Canada, we have a
lot of refugees coming Alhamdulillah, and some people
come as immigrants.
When they come they apply for their health
card,
or they apply for a driver's license, and
they give them a lot of documents to
sign, and one of them organ donation document.
And if your English is not good,
usually what we do every time you get
something to sign, sign, sign, sign. You download
an app or a software, it says, you
agree, click okay. You don't need to read
all the conditions. Right? This is what happens
most of the time because who has the
time
to go through all the conditions, 10, 15
pages? You just sign and click okay and.
Same thing when you get married. Right? They
give you the marriage contract,
signed.
You are blinded by love, you know, so
you just sign. And at the end of
the day, when issues happen,
who put the 15 thou $50,000
mark? Like, your half of your house and
half your kidney and half of your Facebook
account?
Because you didn't read all the details. So
what happens, at least in one case, they
came to my attention.
One brother came, and he signed the paper.
His English is not the best. Okay.
Do you agree to donate organs? If you
die, yes. No problem. Okay. Okay. Okay. Everything
is okay. The person died,
and the family got a call,
we need the kidney. What kidney?
You know, the guy signed, he said you
can take my kidney. No. No. No. No.
It must be someone else. He he didn't
know. Right? So come with these issues. So
number 1, Islamically,
you can't donate your blood,
we'll talk about organs, or your organs to
a Muslim or non Muslim, saving life is
very important Islam.
There are two conditions that that have to
be met. Number 1, you don't sell your
organs. It is not yours. You cannot sell
it, you cannot lease it. It belongs to
Allah. You cannot take money because we hear
stories all the time from China, from Korea,
people sell their kidney or something else, their
tissue,
just to buy an iPhone or iPad. You
know, this is very common. People put it
on, you know, their and their whatever.
But Islamic league cannot do this, it is
not actually yours. This is the number one
condition. And number 2,
make sure,
before you donate an organ, make sure that
your body will function after.
So evidently, you cannot donate your heart because
you will die or your liver, but you
can donate some of your kidney and you
will survive. But make sure that the other
half is actually functioning, so you will survive
after, and these are the two conditions in
this case.
A lot of scholars,
they agree to what I said during your
life, if you donate during your life. But
after your death, a lot of they have
issues because you came to this world in
one piece, you don't want to meet the
Allah
in different pieces. Because what happens if someone
dies and, you know, you tell them take
whatever you want, and they open you, and
they cut you, and, you know, they take
the kidney, they throw the legs, and a
lot of, you know, scholars, they have reservations.
But again, this is something that is left
to you and the family. And make sure
if you,
pledged to donate the organs to put something
in you.
Is very important. So you tell the family
what needs to to be done if if
something happens.
So the third case is,
I'm not sure if we have a lot
of time, but
removing life support. We heard stories about life
support and I get
phone calls all the time. People say, well,
my dad or my mom is at the
hospital and they have been on life support
for a long time,
and the doctor is saying we need to
remove the life support because it's it's it
is costing them money, and it is very
difficult for the family, the back and forth,
5, 7 years, and, you know, what should
we do?
So basically, very quickly in 2 minutes,
everyone agrees in this world, the 7,500,000,000
people in this world, they agree
death happens when the soul leaves the body.
Now they disagree on what constitutes
the soul leaving the body, like, how do
we know that the soul left the body?
They say there are 2 ways, and the
ulama disagree. What constitutes
the soul leaving the body in this case?
So some of them say, if your heart
stops, this is death.
This is one group of Alemab. The second
group, they say if the stem of the
brain stops this is deaf.
The chosen opinion is the stem of the
brain, if it stops this
is this is deaf. Why? Because in many
cases, if the heart stops, we heard of
so many stories. People's hearts, you know, they
stop for a minute or 2, then they
resuscitate the body and the person comes back
to life. So it is reversible in this
case. But in some cases,
or actually in many cases, if someone's stem
of the brain stops,
99%
of the time it is irreversible, the person
is not coming back to life. It is
almost impossible.
But subhanAllah, we heard stories
that someone died for, you know, someone was
on life support and the doctor said this
person will die,
and and they live, and they survive. And
subhanAllah, someone is walking around, they have no
medical history, nothing, and they fall down and
die. So at the end of the day,
this is Qadarullah.
Whether to remove the life support or not,
this is left to the family to decide
with the Mufti, and the Mufti in this
case is not the imam, but the doctors.
The doctors were taking care of the case,
2 or 3 of them reliable, Muslim or
non Muslim, it doesn't matter. If they decide
that is irreversible,
then the family can make a decision,
and so on and so forth. It is
something that is left for the family to
decide,
and to choose who will decide if you're
there and you're not able to decide, this
is something you put in your that my
son, my wife, my is gonna take care
of this. This is something you decide in
the will say inshallah.
So number 4, we'll talk quickly about conditional,
divorce. Because people always come with these questions
about divorce, and people there's a lot of
confusion when it comes to a divorce. So
today, inshallah,
divorce would be made easy.
Knowing about it, not that I'm telling you
to go and divorce. No. Just to have
to learn the basis.
One thing we should know about divorce in
Islam, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not want
divorces to happen. Allah wants to keep the
families together.
And this is why there are a lot
of conditions that have to be met for
divorce to happen. I know there are there's
difference opinion, and so on and so forth,
but I'm gonna share with you the chosen
opinions in this case. If someone says to
his wife, I divorced you, in her monthly
cycle, the chosen opinion is it doesn't count.
After childbirth,
during this, time of bleeding, it doesn't count.
This is a chosen opinion.
And if someone has a relationship with his
wife during the time of purity between the
two periods,
if they have a relationship that chosen opinion,
it doesn't count.
It doesn't count. This is the chosen opinion,
this is the chosen opinion. It has to
be in a time of purity between the
two periods. He didn't touch his wife, he
doesn't have the desire, and he gives her
talaq. But it has to be during the
time of purity in which, both of them
they didn't have, you know, an intimate relationship.
And this is the way the Prophet
instructed the sahaba to do. And they say
if you do something else, if you divorce
her during monthly cycle, this again is the
sunnah of the Prophet
It doesn't count, and this is the children
opinion. If someone gives his wife talaq 3
times in one sitting,
I know the controversy in India and so
on and so forth, but Islamically it counts
as one talaq, not 3. Because there's hadith,
authentic hadith, and
someone came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
a very authentic hadith, and said, You Rasulullah,
Ishat bear witness
that I divorced my wife 3 times, not
once, 3 times. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam was angry and he said, Do
you play with the book of Allah while
I'm still among you? If you want to
divorce your wife, divorce her once.
1. And if you want to finalize the
divorce, you have to wait for 3 months
until the 8th day is over. Then
she is free to marry after 3 months
after the. One Talat, if if the 3
months pass, in this case it is one
Talataba'in,
she can go and marry someone else including
you with a new and a new because
it's only one count Talatba and not 3
in this case. I know it's a bit,
you know, academic and confusing, but this is
the, the the ruling in this case. For
Talatul Masrud, the conditional divorce, if someone tells
his wife, and I have see I receive
phone calls all the time. I told my
wife don't go to Tim Hortons, and she
went
because she thought she loves Timbits all the
time.
She went. I mean this is very childish,
but people should not use the, you know,
divorce lightly. It's a very serious thing. Allah
calls it, it's a serious
in the Quran. It's a tremendous
commitment, marriage. So you don't take it lightly.
But anyway, if someone says to your wife,
if you go to Walmart, if you go
to mom's house,
In this case, we ask the husband for
his
If the husband said, yes my intention was
so it's one count.
And if his was just a threat, I
was just threatening her, I don't know where
to go, but my was not The chosen
opinion in this case, is talaq mashrut.
And in this case it is if she
left the house, actually if she left the
house and his niyyah was a threat, in
this case his talaq is actually kafara to
yameel. It's like he made an oath by
Allah, don't leave the house, she left. And
in this case the chosen opinion is kafaratul
yameel, don't leave the house, or I'll give
you talat, she left and his niyyah was
a threat, not divorce. In this case kafaratul
yameel, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in
the Quran, if you, if you break the
oath, then number 1, you feed 10 poor
people. Some people they just
they just fasted 3 days. No. You start
with feeding the 10 poor people,
which is about 10, $15 per each. If
you cannot
pay this money, then you just fast, set
option number 2, fast the 3 days. We
ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to give us
the best in this life, and the best
in the life to come, salallahu alayhi.
The last question is, cryptocurrency
and bitcoins.
And although
bitcoins and cryptocurrencies
in general,
they have been around for almost 10 years
now. They started in 2,008.
And because, you know, people who actually
they deal with, bitcoins and stuff, they are
making lots of money.
This is what people are hearing,
and and and, from what I read back
in when it started 2,008
and 2,009,
if you actually invest invested
$100 in bitcoins,
by now the $100
would have been $25,000,000.
I I wish I knew back then, I
wouldn't be here. I would be in Florida.
But anyway,
anyway,
there are difference of opinion, just like any
new issue like mortgage, credit cards, and bitcoins,
because these issues we don't have them in
the traditional books of Fafda, like Abhalifa Shafa,
Amalek, and Ahmad. The scholars have difference of
opinion
based on the information they receive.
So one group will say, well it's ham
100%.
Why? They say, number 1,
we did we don't know who started it.
Why they started it? We don't know. And
number 2, they say, well, it's not actually
a currency, it is not something physical like
a dollar or a dinar or a rupee.
It's not something you can hold in your
hand. This is a digital currency like, we
we have no control.
And number 3, they say because
governments cannot control it, there's no central central
bank to control it. This free movement of
the bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency
like Ethereum or any anything else,
you cannot control it. And in this case,
bad things can happen, like money laundering can
happen, and
crazy groups can easily transfer the money. And
this is why certain countries like Turkey, Egypt,
Palestine,
they issued official fact was that it is
Haram.
Some other
countries and some other groups, they started actually
to deal with cryptocurrency.
You can actually go to the super the
store and pay with cryptocurrency. You can pay
your,
tuition fees at colleges with
cryptocurrency. They say, well, it's actually a currency.
You can use it. It doesn't have to
be physical, but you can actually use it.
And number 2, they say if you want
to use it in a bad way for
money laundry or to do something haram, you
can do this with anything, like with the
dollar, with the dirham, anything
with Western Union Bank money transfer and so
on and so forth. And they say the
reason it was invented
10 years ago
is for the free movement of the of
the assets. Like say for example, if I
go to the store and I buy, I
use my card or credit card, there's a
middleman.
Someone who will take a fee for this
transaction. It could be the bank, it could
be the credit card company,
and the whole point of cryptocurrency
is to move the middle man,
and and the, you know, and therefore the
free movement of the assets, and so on
and so forth. But at the end of
the day,
it's a new issue,
scholars don't know for sure, people are still
waiting, and it's not very clear to us.
So you have the 2 different opinions. Some
say haram for the reasons I gave, some
say halal for the reasons I gave, and
they say
typically in Islam if there's something new, it
should be halal unless there's something that makes
it Haram 100%.
So we don't know. So you have the
2 options, we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to give us the best in this life,
and the best in the life to come,
and give us sincerity in everything we say
and do.