vinegar, it becomes lawful, for the effervescent fermentation that produced intoxication has disappeared. Hence it is now permitted. The juristic maxim is: “The ruling is tied to its effective cause—present when the cause is present and absent when the cause is absent.”

4 – The ḥadith indicates that wine is impure. Allah the Exalted says, “It is an abomination of Satan’s handiwork” (Q 5:90). Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī transmitted a consensus on its impurity, and Ibn Rushd remarked that any contrary view is anomalous.

5 – Al-Ṣanʿānī states in Subul al-Salām: The correct principle is that the default ruling on tangible substances is purity, and prohibition does not necessarily entail impurity. Cannabis, for example, is prohibited yet pure; likewise all narcotics and lethal poisons—there is no evidence for deeming them impure. Impurity, by contrast, always entails prohibition, for every impure thing is forbidden, though not every forbidden thing is impure. Declaring something impure means it must never be touched, whereas a simple prohibition may apply to objects that are unquestionably pure, such as wearing silk or gold, both of which are unanimously held to be pure.
Once this is clear, the textual prohibition of wine does not automatically prove its impurity; separate evidence is required. Otherwise we remain with the agreed-upon presumption of purity, and whoever claims otherwise must produce proof. End quote.
The earlier quotations from al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd already cited the consensus on wine’s impurity, and proof of that impurity from the purified Sunnah was presented under ḥadith no. 19.

Disagreement among scholars over whether impurity is removed by transformation
The jurists differed on whether an impure substance becomes pure through istiḥālah (substantial transformation), that is, by changing from one state to another:
• Abū Ḥanīfah and the Ẓāhirī school held that impurity is removed by such transformation. This is also one reported view within the schools of Imām Mālik and Imām Aḥmad, and it is the position selected by Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah.
• The majority of scholars maintained that transformation does not render an impure substance pure; this is the view of the leading imams