Halal investing, explained from scratch.

When a company like Apple wants to grow, it sometimes sells small ownership slices of itself to the public. Each slice is called a stock (or a share). When you buy one share, you own a tiny piece of Apple. If Apple makes money, your share is worth a bit more. If Apple does badly, your share is worth less.

The place where stocks are bought and sold is called a stock exchange — like the New York Stock Exchange. You buy them through a brokerage like Robinhood, Fidelity, or Schwab. It's the same idea as buying gold or property — you own a real thing whose value goes up and down.

Islam permits owning a piece of a business — that's as old as commerce itself. What it does not permit is earning money from sources that are haram (forbidden) — most importantly riba (interest).

Modern companies are complicated. Even a company in a permissible business (say, a software company) might earn small amounts of interest on its bank account. So halal investing isn't a single yes/no — it's a screening process that checks: is the company's main business permissible, and are its finances within acceptable limits?

That's what Mizan does. It looks at any company you ask about and tells you, in plain numbers, whether it passes the screen for your tradition.

Because shariah applies to a world the early scholars never imagined. The Quran doesn't mention stock markets, ETFs, or cryptocurrencies — so today's scholars apply general principles to new situations. Different scholars apply them differently.

For example, the question of how much interest income a company can have before it's no longer permissible to own: AAOIFI says less than 5%. Mufti Taqi Usmani agrees with that 5% but adds another rule: the company's real, physical assets must be at least 20% of total assets. The strictest interpretations allow no interest exposure at all.

So the same stock can be halal under one scholar and not under another. Mizan shows you the verdict under all six major methodologies side-by-side. You pick which one to follow based on which scholar you trust most — usually one in your own tradition (Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i, or Ja'fari).

Halal screening boils down to five numbers. You don't need a finance degree — just intuition. Mizan shows you each as a bar, with the company's actual value and the scholar's limit:

• Impermissible income — what percentage of the company's revenue is from impermissible sources (mostly interest on cash)? Most scholars cap at 5%.
• Interest-bearing debt — how much money has the company borrowed at interest, relative to its size? Cap is usually 30-33%.
• Cash + securities — how much is the company sitting on in cash and interest-earning securities? Cap is also 30-33%.
• Receivables — money owed to the company by its customers. Some scholars cap this at 33%.
• Illiquid assets — what percentage of the balance sheet is real, physical stuff? Mufti Taqi Usmani specifically requires at least 20%.

A stock passes a methodology if it's in a permissible business AND its ratios are all within that scholar's limits.

Even halal-screened companies often earn small amounts of interest on their cash. So when they pay you a dividend (a small share of their profits), a tiny slice of that dividend is technically impermissible.

Purification is the practice of calculating that impure slice and donating it to charity, without expecting reward in return. It cleanses your earnings. Some scholars (like Mufti Taqi) also require purifying realized capital gains, not just dividends.

Mizan calculates this for you — both the dividend portion and (where required) the gain portion. Try it.

Zakat is a separate religious obligation — the annual 2.5% charity all Muslims with sufficient wealth must pay. It includes the value of your stocks, your cash, your gold and silver, and any other zakatable assets.

You pay it on your zakat anniversary date (one lunar year after you first had enough wealth to qualify, called nisab). Mizan has a calculator that handles this end-to-end at /zakat.

If you've read this far, here's the simplest possible path:

1. Pick a scholar to follow. If you genuinely don't know which scholar matches your tradition, start with AAOIFI — it's the most widely-used mainstream standard. You can always switch.
2. Try the screener. Search for any stock you've heard of — Apple, Tesla, Amazon — and see Mizan's verdict. Try Apple here.
3. Open a brokerage account. Robinhood, Fidelity, or Schwab in the US. Free to open. Takes 10 minutes.
4. Buy a halal-screened ETF as a starting point. ETFs like SPUS or HLAL hold dozens of halal-screened companies in one share. They're the easiest first investment for a Muslim investor.
5. Set a small monthly amount. Even $50/month invested regularly compounds meaningfully over years. You don't need a lot to start.

None of this is investment advice — we're information, not advisors. Speak to a licensed financial planner before making decisions that matter.