We don't screen stocks ourselves. Screening is done by Zoya, a Shariah screening specialist provider, using the AAOIFI (Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions) standard. Amanie Advisor, our independent Shariah Supervisory Board, has a role to sign off on our approach, not to check each stock individually.
The Two Tests
Business activity: what the company earns money from. Alcohol, gambling, adult content, and conventional lending are excluded. A small amount of incidental non-compliant revenue (up to 5% of total revenue) is tolerated.
Financials: interest-bearing debt must stay under 30% of market cap. The same 30% limit applies to interest-bearing deposits and securities.
Note: Different standards use different thresholds. AAOIFI uses 30% of market cap, while MSCI and FTSE often use 33%, sometimes against total assets instead. So two providers can reach different conclusions on the same stock without either being wrong.
Two Examples Worth Knowing
GBTC: This is just a bitcoin wrapper, so buying it is effectively buying bitcoin. Whether bitcoin itself is permissible isn't something AAOIFI has ruled on, and scholars disagree. We don't take a position, so we don't offer it.
MSTR (Strategy): This is an operating company, so it's tested normally: its revenue comes from software, it earned $0 interest income in FY2025, and its debt is under 30% of market cap. Its bitcoin holdings are a treasury asset, not interest-bearing, so they don't count against it. This isn't a ruling on bitcoin, just a test of the company's revenue and debt. Its status can change if the stock price falls or debt rises.
Ongoing Monitoring
Compliance isn't a one-time check. It's continuous:
Ratings refresh with each new quarterly or annual filing, and show the date last updated.
Status can shift between filings too, since the ratios track market cap.
Funds and ETFs are watched separately. Their status can change if a holding's status changes, even with no new fund data.
Anything that loses compliance is removed from the investable list automatically.
This is how CUSP Wealth platform has a Fatwa certification and remains consistently Shariah-compliant.