Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 11

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April 11

Is phenol haram?

The April 11 "On this day" feature references a riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, in 1993. Part of the impetus for this seems to be that some Muslim inmates objected to mandatory tuberculosis testing, on the grounds that the test required the injection of (presumably a tiny amount of) phenol, which they thought violated the ban on alcohol.

Now, phenol is arguably an alcohol, in some technical chemical sense of the word (though it doesn't actually meet the definition given in our article). But in any case it is not used to get drunk (no idea whether it would work or not; it's far too poisonous for anyone to find out). The search term alcohol and Islam leads me to a section that points to an article called khamr, which in the strictest sense is about wine, but apparently has been broadened to intoxicating substances generally, but not as far as I can tell to chemical "alcohols" generally.

So is there actually any recognized Muslim prohibition on medications containing phenol? Or is this just a misunderstanding on the part of the inmates involved? --Trovatore (talk) 01:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Or just an attempt to stir up trouble? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:33, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

A helpful, well-referenced, and insightful answer as always, Bugs. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:22, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Bugs's answer did not really get me any closer to finding out what I asked about, but neither does bickering about it, so how about we just let that go, and wait to see if anyone has any actual information on the question. --Trovatore (talk) 02:25, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Do be patient; I am working on it. (Sometimes it's worthwhile to call out the useless responses to encourage eventual improvement, even if it results in a bit of local, transient bickering.) Cheers! TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:51, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

It's not useless - it's a possibility that the OP failed to consider. Keep in mind they're in prison, which means they've likely already violated the tenets of their religion. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Phenol is a mild topical analgesic and has something of a numbing effect, it has a hydroxyl group like other organic alcohols; how that intersects with religious proscriptions on intoxicants is above my pay grade. Speaking as someone who regularly watchlists articles on vaccine conspiracies and other medical nonsense, this isn't the stupidest objection to a medical procedure, though it's not a strong one.

This post to Prison Legal News (December 1993, roughly 8 months after the riot) is interesting, in that it is looking at the broader question of exposure to (animal) serum, rather than just phenol, and asking whether or not alternative screening methods (e.g. chest X-ray) should be considered as a legitimate religious accommodation. As a question of law and ethics and consent rather than a question purely of science, would it have been a reasonable step to offer these inmates the option of a chest radiograph in lieu of a subcutaneous tuberculin injection?

Whether the "On this day" summary is a fair representation of the Ohio riot...ehhhhh....? From the 'other side', we do have this commentary:

"While I will concede that the TB test was the last straw which broke the camel's back, the inhumane treatment and the long train of abuses are what induced some non-Muslims to seize the opportunity to instantaneously convert a peaceful protest into a full-scale rebellion. I cannot and will not concede that Muslims were responsible for non-Muslims' actions; however, the state feels otherwise."

In other words, did Wikipedia err in (over)emphasizing the involvement of Muslims (as a convenient scapegoat at this point in U.S. history) versus other factors which apparently contributed to the riot? Realistically, just what fraction of Ohio's 1993 prison population were Muslim, anyway? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:51, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks; these are interesting and useful considerations. I am still specifically interested in the question from the standpoint of Islamic jurisprudence, though. --Trovatore (talk) 04:48, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

In case there's some confusion, the OTD entry didn't comment on the motivation in any way nor on any personal identification of the participants, simply mentioned a riot of inmates [1]. The section of our article Southern Ohio Correctional Facility#1993 riot [2] does mention the phenol aspect which I suspect is at least in part what brought this question to Trovatore's mind, but only as a statement of one inmate from a Netflix documentary. It mentions concern over TB testing for Muslim inmates, but also mentions other factors and seems to give about equal prominence to prison gangs Gangster Disciples, Muslims, and Aryan Brotherhood as participants. Nil Einne (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Web search finds this article[3] about halal vaccines mentions that a particular meningitis vaccine "is obligatory for Muslims travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage. The vaccine is made free of any animal component and phenol during the development and production process, making it halal and Sharia-compliant." Based on that, phenol sounds problematic. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 05:47, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks. That does seem to suggest that there is at least a view, not connected to the Ohio inmates, that phenol might be haram.

It's still not clear to me what the reasoning might be, though. --Trovatore (talk) 06:39, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

As the khamr article states, there isn't even agreement within Islam on what qualifies as "alcohol and intoxicants", with different madhahib holding different positions—some even permitting alcoholic beverage consumption. You probably will have to dig into each school to find out what their positions are and their reasoning. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 08:50, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

(One might draw parallels with the debates among Christian denominations over the nature and proper celebration of the Eucharist.) --47.146.63.87 (talk) 08:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Relating to the points raised by 47, it's perhaps worth reading some of the general commentary on alcohol in medicines in Islam. See e.g. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Most don't ban it outright but many seem to suggest use of alcohol itself as medicine is forbidden. This may or may not apply to topical use, and I'm sure you can get a lot of complicated discussions about using it as mouth wash. (I strongly suspect you'll find a bunch forbid it use as mouthwash and sometimes even topically but allow its use as an antidote when no other alternative is available. Of course not all people who discuss this are necessarily aware of medical application details.) In terms of medicines which contain alcohol, some suggest you should consider whether it's likely to have an intoxicating effect, some are more in the lines of avoid it if other alternatives are available just in case. Nil Einne (talk) 17:14, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Of course even in foods it can also get incredibly complicated e.g. [9] Nil Einne (talk) 17:26, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Islam differentiated itself from other religions by being more pure, Customs from the local pagans like their holidays were just amalgamated to Christianity to wean people off paganism (that's why Halloween means All Hallow's (Holy (All Saints Day) Eve and all that weird egg-laying bunny stuff for instance), it has the Trinity which didn't look monotheistic enough, both religions' Bibles discourage drunkness but not drinking, they don't specifically condemn gambling (maybe they forgot?). So the different schools of thought on average is stricter on alcohol than the other current Abrahamic religions, many schools don't want to get close to slightly buzzed, some go further then others. Muhammad Ali after his conversion drunk Coca-Cola that had 1 drop of rum added so he could say he had a drink in New York so he was apparently of that level (a raindrop disintegrates above 5 millimeter wide sphere and a drink is about 1.5 fluid ounces so he was apparently OK with up to maybe 1/678th of a drink (1500 microdrinks)) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:46, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

One might go back to the original Koran and note that the prohibition is not alcohol, but drunkenness . . . DOR (HK) (talk) 12:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Only roughly as strict as Noah and the Vineyard in the Bibles of 2 religions then, I didn't know that. Are the more anti-alcohol hadith considered strong? I think I've heard there's one that's kind of a slippery slope or paradox of the heap-type argument. Judaism and majority of Christians on the other hand have wine as an integral part of their religion (Passover and Eucharist respectively). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:14, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Joseph Mccarthy

Was Joseph Mccarthy homosexual?144.35.114.28 (talk) 23:30, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

In 1952, using rumors collected by Pearson, Nevada publisher Hank Greenspun wrote that McCarthy was a homosexual. The major journalistic media refused to print the story, and no notable McCarthy biographer has accepted the rumor as probable. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:32, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

The company he kept (especially Cohn) might have contributed to that rumor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:56, 12 April 2018 (UTC)