Halal stock screening, 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 that company.

If the company makes money, your share is worth a bit more. If it does badly, your share is worth less. You can sell your share to someone else whenever you want — that's what the stock market is for.

Some companies pay a small share of their profits to shareholders each year. That payment is called a dividend.

For a Muslim investor, the question isn't just “will this stock make money?” — it's also “is it permissible to own a piece of this company?”

A few things make this harder than it sounds:

• Sector. Some businesses (alcohol, gambling, conventional banking) aren't permissible to own at all. Most scholars agree on the core list.
• Debt. Many companies fund themselves with interest-bearing loans (riba). If a company is mostly funded by riba, owning shares becomes problematic.
• Income mix. Even a permissible business might earn some interest income on its cash. A small amount is tolerated by most scholars; a lot is not.
• Balance sheet composition. Some scholars require that the company hold enough real assets (factories, equipment) and not just paper holdings.

Each scholar has different thresholds for how much is “too much.”

Most halal investing apps hide this fact and just pick one default framework for you. HalalGauge does the opposite.

A Hanafi investor following Mufti Taqi Usmani applies stricter rules than an investor following the standard AAOIFI methodology. A Shia investor following Sistani has a different framework entirely. The strict zero-tolerance view rules out almost every public equity.

One stock can be halal under AAOIFI and not halal under Mufti Taqi at the same time. Both rulings are sincere; the difference is methodology.

HalalGauge shows you all six side-by-side so you can see exactly where they agree and where they split.

You can change your scholar anytime from the screen page. Your preference is saved in your browser.

When you search a stock on HalalGauge, you'll see four parts. They're stacked top-to-bottom on the screen page:

This is where HalalGauge does something other apps don't: track changes over time.

A company's balance sheet changes every quarter when they file a new earnings report. Specifically:

• Debt can creep up. If a company borrows more to fund expansion, debt-to-market-cap can cross the 30% threshold and the stock fails.
• Cash can pile up. If buybacks stop and cash builds up, the cash-to-market-cap ratio can exceed 30%.
• Stock price can drop. Market cap is the denominator in two key ratios. If price falls sharply, ratios that were comfortably under threshold can suddenly breach it.
• Business mix can shift. Companies pivot — sometimes into something that fails sector exclusions.

That's why HalalGauge tracks quarter-by-quarter, surfaces upcoming earnings dates, and shows you the full track record. So you can spot changes before they catch you off-guard.

Three tools on HalalGauge help you keep tabs on stocks you care about:

All saved in your browser — no account needed.

HalalGauge ships a few additional features for users who need them. They're intentionally secondary — the core experience is stock screening.

• Purification calculator. If you own dividend-paying stocks with some non-permissible income, this calculates the share you'd donate to charity.
• Zakat calculator. Annual zakat obligation (2.5% of qualifying wealth). Most younger investors find this easy to calculate manually, but the tool is there if you want it.
• Crypto and Sukuk. Multi-scholar views on major cryptoassets and Islamic bonds. Both are in earlier development than stock screening — treat as a starting point, not the final word.