Is It Permissible to Use Perfume Containing Alcohol?
Most contemporary scholars permit it, holding that the ethanol used in perfumery is not the intoxicating wine addressed by the prohibition, and that it is not consumed in any case.
The short answer is above. What follows is the reasoning behind it, including where scholars differed.
The evidence
The prohibition of khamr concerns the intoxicating drink and its consumption; scholars discussed whether it is physically impure (najis) or only prohibited to drink.
A number of classical and contemporary scholars, including ash-Shawkani and contemporary councils, held that khamr is not physically impure, which resolves the question for topical use.
Synthetic ethanol used industrially is not produced from the fermentation of grapes or dates in the manner the texts address.
In practice
- Alcohol-free perfumes remove the question where you prefer caution.
- Consumption remains prohibited regardless of this discussion.
- The same reasoning is generally applied to hand sanitiser and topical medications.
None of this is complicated. The difficulty is entirely in the doing, and the doing starts with one repetition today.
Go deeper. Thousands of answers, searchable by topic and reviewed before publication, are at Islamic Q&A — qa.hisnulmuslimapp.com.
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