—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—was asked about a mouse that had fallen into ghee, and said: ‘Throw it away, along with the ghee around it, and eat your ghee.’” If contact with a mouse does not render all the ghee impure, how could contact with impure fat render the inside of the cheese impure? Moreover, removing its outer layer is required only when it is certain that impurity has touched it. Mere doubt does not require this.

As for the second reason, it is known that they do not leave all the livestock they wound without proper slaughter. Indeed, it has been said that they do this only to cattle. It has also been said that they do this until the animal falls, then slaughter it properly. Such a practice does not make their slaughtered animals unlawful. Rather, when the unlawful is mixed with the lawful among a number too large to count—as when a man's sister is indistinguishable among the inhabitants of a town, or carrion and usurped property are mixed among the possessions of its people—this does not make everything in the town unlawful, just as when a sister is confused with an unrelated woman, or a properly slaughtered animal with one that died without proper slaughter. Thus, what has been mentioned does not make their slaughtered animals unlawful when the circumstances of their slaughter are unknown.

Even supposing that the cheese is made with rennet from an animal that died without proper slaughter, scholars hold two well-known views on this matter:

The first is that it is permissible and pure. This is the position of Abū Hanīfah and of Ahmad according to one of the two reports from him.

The second is that it is unlawful and impure, as held by Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad according to