About Shariah Agent: who writes this, how we check it, and what we will never claim

Who we are

This site is written and maintained by the research team at HalalScreener, a Shariah compliance screening service for listed stocks, ETFs and crypto at halalscreener.app. HalalScreener also runs Scholar, a grounded question-answering tool that retrieves from named scholarly sources.

We built this site because we build one of the tools it describes, and we think the public deserves a plain, sourced account of where software's authority ends, written by people who have had to decide where to draw that line in code.

We are not Islamic scholars. We read rulings, standards and research for a living and we apply scholars' rules in software. That is the whole of our qualification and we do not claim more.

How we write a page

1. Primary sources. Institutional fatwa bodies, the published rulings of named scholars, regulators' frameworks, peer-reviewed research, and the original announcements of technical standards. Secondary coverage is labelled as such.
2. Attribution for every ruling. We say which institution or scholar said what, quote rather than paraphrase where it matters, and link. Where a source is in Arabic or behind a login, we say so.
3. Both traditions, equal weight. Where Sunni and Ja'fari practice differ, both are presented in the same format with the same care. We do not take sides between schools, and we never present one tradition's practice as the default.
4. Plain language. Terms are defined in the glossary. If a sentence needs a theology degree, we rewrite it.
5. Dates everywhere. Each page shows its last update. Rulings and studies carry their dates in the text.
6. Applied to ourselves first. The Shariah Agent Standard includes a self-assessment of HalalScreener's tools, with the gaps shown.

What we will never claim

• That any AI, including ours, can issue a fatwa or replace a scholar. Dar al-Ifta has ruled it cannot; the structure of taqlid leaves no room for it; we agree.
• That HalalScreener certifies anything. It screens stocks, ETFs and crypto against published rules and shows its working. It does not certify, and it does not screen sukuk.
• That one school's position is "the Islamic position".
• Numbers or rulings we cannot source. If something you expected is missing, that is why.

Our relationship to HalalScreener

HalalScreener funds this site and its team writes it. Links to HalalScreener are marked and carry tracking parameters so we can see whether the site is useful. Where we use HalalScreener's Scholar as a worked example, we say so, and we invite readers to test it against the same checks we apply to everyone else.

Advertising

None at launch. If introduced, ads will be clearly marked, excluded from definition and ruling blocks, and filtered to exclude categories incompatible with the subject matter, including interest-based lending, gambling and alcohol. Advertisers will have no influence on content.

Corrections

Email hello@halalscreener.app with the page URL and the correction. We publish corrections on the page concerned with the date. Scholars and institutions who believe we have mischaracterised a position are particularly welcome; we would rather be corrected than confidently wrong.

Reuse

Quote and link freely with attribution. The Shariah Agent Standard may be adopted by anyone under the terms on its page.