How do we determine if a certain alcohol based perfume is permissible to use or not?
Bismillahi Ta’ala
Walaikum Assalam Warahmatullah
The alcohol used in majority of perfumes is alcohol denat from grains and sugars. If not that then they are ethanol from synthetic manufacturing. (referred either as ethyl alcohol, or ethanol)
The ruling of such alcohols is that they are not khamr, so they are neither haram for consumption, nor are they najis (impure). More importantly, alcohol denat is not consumable alcohol.
So far in my reading and research I have not found any evidence that industrial practice uses anything but the above. Hence our default position is that unless mentioned on the product, or known from the company, the perfumes will be assume to follow default position of the industry (i.e. alcohol denat or synthetic).
A point of caution is that some high-end perfumes may use grape alcohol under the branding of “natural” or “organic”. In such perfumes it will be mandatory to check whether they have actually used grape based alcohol or not. If it is found that such perfumes contains grape based alcohol, then they will be haram for usage as the perfume would be considered impure (najis).
Wallahu A’lam
And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best
Mufti Faisal al-Mahmudi