unknown404
New member
Whenever a Muslim decides to invest in a company, for the most part the only two things that are taken into consideration with regards to shariah-compliance are the balance-sheet, and the product itself.
If those two get a pass, then we don't consider how those halal products are being used.
Knives are halal to sell to the public, as are apples. We don't have an obligation (as far as I know) to go and ask individuals what they are going to do with these inherently halal products.
But selling knives to a known-thief or selling apples to a cidery, or even selling accounting software to a mortgage firm is when the issue arises.
These products are inherently halal, but we are approached by businesses (and not individual consumers) that have a clear-cut blatant intent on how they wish to utilize the product.
Here are a few examples of halal products being used by businesses with clear, open intent, in a way that is totally haram:
1) Cloud Services:
Cloud providers like Google, Amazon, or Microsoft provide inherently halal webservices. This doesn't change the fact that companies like Netflix, Meta, NSFW websites, all banks and social media platforms, are all facilitated by these cloud providers. There is no doubt that they are well aware who their customers are. Especially at such scale.
2) Social Media Platforms:
This one doesn't need much explanation. Reddit is about to IPO. If it has 0 riba on its sheets, does this make it halal given how much haram content is on the platform? This goes for every social media platform. Why do many "Islamic" finance websites greenlight social media companies?
3) GPU Companies:
NVIDIA / AMD sell these incredible processing devices that are great at 3D matrix arithmetic. Basically an inherently halal modern abacus on steroids. However these devices have spent two decades being sold for rendering. Whether is was video games or video editing, we KNOW with borderline certainty that any game that requires a GPU to render it isn't going to be void of music or haram elements. Nowadays most of the GPU revenue is rolling in for a new use case: generative AI. The only apparent issue here would be companies like Stability Diffusion that approach NVIDIA with clear cut intent to buy compute in order to generate haram media (picture making / NSFW media).
4) AI Legal Startups:
Imagine a startup offers a language-learning AI model that can draft documents, summarize cases, and most importantly synthesize a series of really strong arguments to present in court. This product is essentially an inherently halal autonomous word processer. But selling this product to firms that operate under a legal system that is contradictory to the shariah is the problem. I'm sure there are law verticals even in secular countries that don't violate Islam, but that means the startup will need to restrict their customer base to firms who operate only within those verticals.
5) Recruitment Platforms / Agencies:
LinkedIn falls under this category too, and these platforms can be used for great good, and offer a really useful service for networking and finding employment, but the problem in owning equity in these businesses is that you know for a fact that you are going to be aiding the employment hunt of finance bros (who will do conventional finance) or people that will work in other haram industries like conventional media. I am yet to see such a platform or agency of this nature that only focuses on engineers, medical professions, education, etc... Even from the business operator POV it would be weird to stipulate "No conventional finance job listings" & "No attaching a photo of yourself with makeup to your CV".
I understand that this rules out many companies, but I think the problem people have is that the mechanism of buying equity has been abstracted to merely pressing a button, obscuring the fact that we become legitimate owners.
If we were directly involved in transactions and a business with clear haram intentions wanted to buy our product, accepting their money would be undeniably haram.
The only real solution is for Muslims to start being builders so they can operate their businesses in a halal manner while creating investment windows for other Muslims.
If those two get a pass, then we don't consider how those halal products are being used.
Knives are halal to sell to the public, as are apples. We don't have an obligation (as far as I know) to go and ask individuals what they are going to do with these inherently halal products.
But selling knives to a known-thief or selling apples to a cidery, or even selling accounting software to a mortgage firm is when the issue arises.
These products are inherently halal, but we are approached by businesses (and not individual consumers) that have a clear-cut blatant intent on how they wish to utilize the product.
Here are a few examples of halal products being used by businesses with clear, open intent, in a way that is totally haram:
1) Cloud Services:
Cloud providers like Google, Amazon, or Microsoft provide inherently halal webservices. This doesn't change the fact that companies like Netflix, Meta, NSFW websites, all banks and social media platforms, are all facilitated by these cloud providers. There is no doubt that they are well aware who their customers are. Especially at such scale.
2) Social Media Platforms:
This one doesn't need much explanation. Reddit is about to IPO. If it has 0 riba on its sheets, does this make it halal given how much haram content is on the platform? This goes for every social media platform. Why do many "Islamic" finance websites greenlight social media companies?
3) GPU Companies:
NVIDIA / AMD sell these incredible processing devices that are great at 3D matrix arithmetic. Basically an inherently halal modern abacus on steroids. However these devices have spent two decades being sold for rendering. Whether is was video games or video editing, we KNOW with borderline certainty that any game that requires a GPU to render it isn't going to be void of music or haram elements. Nowadays most of the GPU revenue is rolling in for a new use case: generative AI. The only apparent issue here would be companies like Stability Diffusion that approach NVIDIA with clear cut intent to buy compute in order to generate haram media (picture making / NSFW media).
4) AI Legal Startups:
Imagine a startup offers a language-learning AI model that can draft documents, summarize cases, and most importantly synthesize a series of really strong arguments to present in court. This product is essentially an inherently halal autonomous word processer. But selling this product to firms that operate under a legal system that is contradictory to the shariah is the problem. I'm sure there are law verticals even in secular countries that don't violate Islam, but that means the startup will need to restrict their customer base to firms who operate only within those verticals.
5) Recruitment Platforms / Agencies:
LinkedIn falls under this category too, and these platforms can be used for great good, and offer a really useful service for networking and finding employment, but the problem in owning equity in these businesses is that you know for a fact that you are going to be aiding the employment hunt of finance bros (who will do conventional finance) or people that will work in other haram industries like conventional media. I am yet to see such a platform or agency of this nature that only focuses on engineers, medical professions, education, etc... Even from the business operator POV it would be weird to stipulate "No conventional finance job listings" & "No attaching a photo of yourself with makeup to your CV".
I understand that this rules out many companies, but I think the problem people have is that the mechanism of buying equity has been abstracted to merely pressing a button, obscuring the fact that we become legitimate owners.
If we were directly involved in transactions and a business with clear haram intentions wanted to buy our product, accepting their money would be undeniably haram.
The only real solution is for Muslims to start being builders so they can operate their businesses in a halal manner while creating investment windows for other Muslims.