Can we get rid of eaten haram food by throwing up?

Question

My aunt made a cake and bring it to our home today and i ate one part. I didnt asked if it was halal since she is a muslim as well so i tought it was ok to eat.

The cake didnt had any odor or alcohol taste. But she said that she brought an already made dough. In the country i live in (France) pre made dough are always made with alcohol (exept ones that are sold in shops owned by muslims but i know she haven't brought it there).

So knowing that i just consumed alcohol i tried to threw it up (took me a long time to do so since im not used to it lol). I did threw up in the end but im not sure if i got rid of it all or just one bit.

So my question is that i saw that consuming haram food make your duaa be rejected for 40 days. Does it concern any one that does it or just ones that does it willingly ?

Answer 1

Alcohol can be involved in one of the following ways:

• Where yeast is used to raise dough, here carbon dioxide gas and ethanol is automatically made as an intermediate product and then is boiled off. This does not make the dough haram.

• Where wine is added as an ingredient in cooking - this is haram as wine is unclean and not permissible to use for any purpose. See Is it haram to eat food in which alcohol has been added?

In any case, even if the cake was haram then you did not know that it was haram as you trusted that a Muslim would only give you halal food. You should throw away the cake after you found out but you will not earn any sin for what you have already eaten while you were unaware. See Do you get sin for doing something unintentionally? and I accidentally ate some non halal chicken, what should I do?.

As for vomiting, there is a hadith that Abu Bakr did that when he found out that he had consumed haram food:

فأدخل أبو بكر يده فقاء كل شىء في بطنه

Abu Bakr put his hand in his mouth and vomited whatever was present in his stomach.

^{— Bukhari}

And this can be followed as a source of Islamic teachings as Abu Bakr was a Sahabi and a Rightly guided caliph:

فعليكم بما عرفتم من سنتي وسنة الخلفاء الراشدين المهديين

I urge you to adhere to what you know of my Sunnah and the path of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs

^{— Ibn Majah}

Some scholars consider it necessary to vomit haram food if it is possible, others consider it to be recommended. See https://islamqa.info/ar/answers/444601