There is no single agreed way to decide whether a company is suitable for a Muslim investor. There are two widely recognised methods, and on some companies they reach different answers. Rather than pick one and hide the other, Titan shows both on every stock, tells you which passes and which does not, and explains why. This page explains the two, in plain English.
Both methods ask the same five questions of a company. First, what does it actually do — a business built on alcohol, gambling, conventional interest-based banking, tobacco, weapons or adult entertainment is excluded outright. Then four questions about its balance sheet: how much it has borrowed, how much it holds in interest-bearing cash and securities, how much it is owed by customers, and how much of its income comes from non-compliant sources. On the first question and most of the financial ones, the two standards almost always agree. They part company on one measurement — debt — and that is where the whole difference lives.
The standard most halal investing apps and index providers apply is the one set by AAOIFI — the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions, the main global standard-setter for Islamic finance. It measures a company’s debt against its market value — what the company is worth on the stock market — and passes it if that debt is under roughly 30%. It is the standard behind most of the halal screening tools an ordinary investor is likely to have used. Because it is measured against market value, a company’s status under this standard can shift as its share price moves.
Titan’s own screen — the same approach used by MSCI’s Islamic indices — measures that same debt against what the company actually owns: its total assets, and passes it if the debt is under one-third. Because a company’s assets do not swing about from day to day the way its share price does, this reading is steadier, and for most profitable companies it is the stricter of the two. It is the more conservative line, and it is the one Titan holds itself to.
Take Coca-Cola. Its debt is about 43% of what it owns — over our stricter one-third line, so it fails our standard. But the same debt is only about 13% of what the company is worth on the stock market — well under the 30% line — so it passes the common standard. Nothing about the company changed; only the yardstick did. Coca-Cola trades far above the value of what it owns, so its debt looks heavy against its assets and light against its market value. That single difference is why the two standards disagree on names like this — and they are the same kind of names: large, established, richly valued companies.
Most services pick one standard and hand you a single yes or no. We think that hides more than it helps. Both standards are recognised and scholar-backed; reasonable people follow each. So on every one of our screened companies we show the result under both, mark clearly where they disagree, and explain the reason in plain terms. We report the score. We do not issue a religious ruling — that is not ours to give. Where the two standards part ways, the line you draw is between you and your own scholar. Our job is to make sure you can see both readings clearly and understand exactly why they differ.
Every stock on Titan is read against both standards. See where any company stands.
This is analysis, not a religious ruling. Confirm anything that matters to you with your own scholar.