I AM IN PERFUME/ATTAR BUSINESS. I WANT TO START A NEW BUSINESS MAKING SPRAY PERFUMES BY USING ETHYL ALCOHOL OR METHYL ALCOHOL. PLEASE CLARIFY WHETHER ISLAM PERMITS THIS BUSINESS.

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

Raw materials are basically pure, and impurity is not a pre-condition for making something unlawful because impurity itself is a legal ruling which requires an independent evidence.  So, everything that is impure is forbidden, but the opposite is not necessarily true. The rule that a material is impure is also a rule that it is forbidden, but the rule that something is forbidden does not necessarily mean that it is impure. For example, wearing silk and gold is forbidden for men but silk and gold themselves are pure.

The evidence that the majority of scholars have used to prove that alcohol is impure is the verse (which means): {O you who believe, intoxicants, gambling and Al-Azlaam (arrows for seeking luck or decision) are an abomination of Satan’s handiwork. So avoid (strictly all) that (abomination) in order that you may be successful.} [Quran 5:90] Therefore, most of the scholars took the meaning of abomination as impurity, but Rabee’ah. Al-Layth Ibn Saad, Al-Muzni, as well as some latter-day Baghdadi and Qaruwi scholars believe that alcohol is pure and that what is forbidden is only drinking it. Sa’eed Ibn Al-Haddaa’ Al-Qaruwi gave as evidence for its purity the fact that it was poured out into the streets of Madeenah (when it was prohibited). He said that if alcohol was impure, the companions of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, would not have poured it in the streets of Madeenah. Also, in the abovementioned verse, Allaah has mentioned and enumerated alcohol along with Al-Azlaam, intoxicants and gambling, and these are all pure materials in the opinion of all the scholars of Islam. The meaning of "Rijs" (abomination) would be that it is a sin that Satan has beautified doing for people. If this is established, it is then clear that what is forbidden is drinking it and that alcohol itself is not impure.  We say, then, that alcoholic perfumes are made of water, the perfuming ingredient(s) and alcohol, which constitutes the highest percentage as compared to the other components of these perfumes. If, the purity is established, then there is no harm in founding such a factory for making perfumes, though it is better to invest in other fields to stay far from the disagreement of the scholars.

Allaah Knows best.