Q&A
Questions people ask.
Short answers, and a link to the longer one where it exists. Ask a new one by replying to any Sunday email.
Starting out
The questions people ask in their first week.
I have never invested. Where do I start?+
With the five-minute story. Then, if your employer offers a retirement plan, ask the plan administrator one question: "Does my plan have a self-directed brokerage option?" If not, any US works the same way: open one, fund it a little at a time, hold a .
Can I actually buy these funds?+
Yes, in an IRA or a brokerage account. In a 401(k), only through a brokerage window, if your plan has one; most plan menus hold mutual funds, which we do not check yet. Retirement money walks through the three places.
What is the halal S&P 500?+
, a fund that holds the companies in the S&P 500 which pass a Shariah screen, about 215 of the 500. It is the yardstick we grade ourselves against.
SPUS, HLAL or UMMA?+
The most-asked question. All three hold large halal companies; they pick and weight them differently, so they move together most of the time and apart in some years. Here is how each did, as of November 2, 2026:
HLAL
one year
+17%
six months
+7%
three months
+3%
UMMA
one year
+24%
six months
+4%
three months
-2%
SPUS
one year
+14%
six months
+9%
three months
+4%
SPUS is US large companies and the biggest of the three. HLAL is also US, a different index. UMMA is global. All three are certified by an independent Shariah board, which is the one thing a screen alone cannot give you.
Source: daily closes with dividends reinvested, from our fund screen, November 2, 2026.
What does the Sunday email contain?+
Every Sunday: what the halal market did, which funds and companies passed, what changed since last Sunday, and the names worth a closer look, in plain words. Five minutes. One email a week, nothing else. It never tells anyone what to buy.
Is it halal?
How the screen works, and why it sometimes disagrees with another one.
How do you know a stock is halal?+
Three rules, applied to the company's latest filings on an AAOIFI basis: the business itself is good, it is not drowning in debt, and the small impermissible slice of income is given away. The full screen runs every month; a name whose last check is older than 30 days is marked "re-check due" in the lookup. Every status on this site carries the date it was checked. The exact thresholds are in the paper.
Why does another screener say something different?+
Different thresholds (30% or 33%), different denominators (market value or total assets), different filing dates. The same company can pass one screen and fail another in the same week, and both can be applying their rules correctly. The mechanics.
Which funds are certified, and which are only screened?+
Certified: the issuer publishes a Shariah certificate for the fund from a named Shariah board or firm. Today that is nine funds: the SP Funds family (SPUS, SPSK, SPRE, SPWO, SPTE), HLAL and UMMA, MNZL and KWIN. Retirement money shows each certificate's date and a link to it. The rest are ordinary funds whose holdings happen to pass a screen today; that can change at the next rebalance. The lookup page marks the certified ones.
How sure are you that a name is halal?+
Every name is checked against the AAOIFI standard, the most widely used in Islamic finance: what the company sells, what it owes, and how much it keeps in accounts that pay interest. The full screen runs every month and every answer shows the date of its last check. A name that reaches the weekly list is also compared with what the certified halal funds hold. Other screens can disagree, because they use different limits, denominators or filing dates. If an answer looks wrong to you, tell us, and ask a scholar you trust. The last word is yours.
What is purification?+
If a sliver of a company's income is impermissible, that sliver of your is given to charity. is the arithmetic for that; the funds built for Muslim investors publish the number per share.
This site
What it is, what it is not.
Where is the market read?+
Under This Week: the market's weather, the industries rising fastest against the index, the stocks and funds we are watching, re-done every weekday morning with the date on everything.
Is this investment advice?+
No. We publish what a written set of rules produced on a given date, for education. We do not know your situation and we never say what you should buy. Terms.
How does the site decide what to show?+
By rules written down in advance and changed only in the open, with the date and the reason. The whole method is one paper: How Purefolio decides.
Who is behind this?+
HalalQuant Research, founded by Amadou Camara, a private investor who has been part of the halal-investing community since 2021. The record opens in public at thirty graded names, misses with the hits. About.