About Saaf
Saaf exists because too many halal-investing decisions get made on faith in a verdict, not faith plus evidence. A screener says “compliant” or “non-compliant” and stops there — no ratio, no filing, no way to check the work. We think that's backwards. If a tool is going to tell you whether a stock fits your principles, it should show its working well enough that you don't have to take our word for it either.
So every verdict on this site links back to the SEC filing it came from, every threshold is published on our methodology page, and every ratio is shown with the real dollar figures behind it — not just a pass/fail badge. Transparency isn't a feature we bolted on; it's the whole premise. A screen you can't verify is just an opinion with a nicer interface.
What Saaf is — and isn't
Saaf is an automated, rule-based screen: it applies AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21, as operationalized by mainstream Islamic index providers, to public data pulled straight from SEC filings. It checks a company's core business against a list of prohibited activities, then runs the financial ratios — debt, interest-bearing holdings, and interest income, each measured against a threshold — and shows its work at every step. It also runs a multi-standard comparison across the other major index methodologies, so you can see exactly where different index families disagree.
Saaf is not a fatwa and not investment advice. It doesn't recommend buying or selling anything, and it isn't a substitute for a qualified scholar's individual ruling — we say so on every report, and we mean it. Automated screening is a starting point for your own research, not the end of it. For anything beyond a quick check — and especially for larger positions — please consult a scholar you trust.
How the screening actually works
The first check is about what a company does. If its core business falls into a prohibited category — conventional banking and insurance, alcohol, gambling, tobacco, pork, adult entertainment, or weapons — it's excluded outright, no matter how clean its balance sheet looks. This runs first and, if it hits, nothing downstream can overturn it.
Companies that clear the business screen then go through three financial ratios: how much interest-bearing debt they carry, how much cash and interest-bearing securities they hold, and how much of their revenue is interest income — each compared against a threshold, all sourced from the same structured financial data companies file with the SEC. A company has to clear every one of these, not just most of them, to come out compliant.
The part we care about most, though, is what happens after the verdict: every figure that goes into that math is shown next to a link to the exact filing it was read from — form type, filing date, and all. Where the numbers alone can't settle something (a gray-area industry, an undisclosed segment of revenue), we say so plainly instead of pretending the math resolved it. Proof, not just a badge.
Who's behind this
Saaf is built and run by an independent, self-funded team. No fund, no brokerage, no data vendor, and no advertiser has a hand in what gets screened or how a verdict comes out — the incentive is to get the screen right and show the work, not to sell you anything downstream of it.
Get in touch
Found a bug, spotted a filing that doesn't match a number on the site, or have a question about how a verdict was reached? Get in touch.