The ethical questions the ratios don't reach.
A debt ratio does not tell you whether a company's products are used in ways you would refuse to fund. The published standards are silent on this, so silence from us would be a position taken by default. This is our position, taken on purpose.
Why this page exists before we've launched
Halal screeners get attacked over ethics, not arithmetic. The most public example in this industry involved a well-known app rating heavy-machinery and energy companies compliant while treating a defence manufacturer's products as impermissible — a distinction critics found impossible to follow. The defence offered was that the company did not set its own criteria. That answer did not work, and it should not have.
The lesson we took: "we just apply the standard" is not a policy. The standard is silent here. Whatever you do in that silence is a choice, and users are entitled to see it written down before they rely on you.
Where we stand
1. The quantitative screen is the floor, not the ceiling
Passing our four ratios and the activity test means a company clears a published financial standard. It does not mean we are telling you the company is good, or that funding it is something you should be comfortable with. Those are separate judgements and we do not fold them into a green tick.
2. Weapons and defence are excluded outright
A company whose primary business is manufacturing weapons or military systems fails the activity test regardless of its balance sheet. We do not attempt to distinguish defensive from offensive production, and we do not exempt a manufacturer because its domestic government is the customer.
3. We do not operate a political boycott list, and we say so
We do not maintain a proprietary list of companies excluded on the basis of a specific conflict, government, or campaign. Three reasons, given honestly:
- These judgements are contested among sincere Muslims and among qualified scholars. A software company quietly encoding one side of that into a pass/fail flag is claiming an authority it doesn't have.
- The underlying facts are frequently unverifiable from public filings. We would be publishing a verdict we could not substantiate — the same failure we criticise elsewhere on this site.
- A hidden list is worse than no list. If we ever added one, it would be published here in full, with the criterion for inclusion and removal.
What we do instead: we surface the facts we can substantiate — SIC classification, segment disclosure where it exists, stated principal activities — so that you can apply your own exclusions on top. Where a company's operations are the subject of significant public controversy relevant to a screening decision, we intend to link the primary sources rather than hand you our conclusion. Your own boycott is yours to run, and we would rather equip it than pre-empt it.
We recognise reasonable people will find this position too cautious. We would rather be criticised for a policy we published than for one we concealed.
4. Purification is not a loophole
The 5% tolerance on non-compliant income is a threshold for holding a security, not permission to keep the income. Purification calculators are part of the free product and we present the obligation as a normal part of using the screen, not an optional extra.
5. We are not the authority
We will never describe a result as our declaration that something is halal. The language we use is "passes the screen described on our methodology page, on a total-assets basis, reviewed by [named scholar]". If you want a ruling that binds your own practice, it comes from a scholar, not from us.
Shariah review
Sepcrium will not sell a subscription before a named Shariah scholar has reviewed this methodology and is identified on this site. That is a gate on launch, not an aspiration.
What the review covers:
- the four ratios, their thresholds, and the choice of denominator
- the activity exclusion list and how primary business is determined
- the buffer rule and the rescreening calendar
- the purification methods offered and how they are presented
- this ethical policy, including section 3
What it does not cover: we will not represent a scholar's engagement as endorsement of the company, of any individual security, or of any user's investment decision. The scholar reviews the method.
We are also writing a Shariah policies-and-procedures document describing how compliance is assured on an ongoing basis — who reviews what, on what schedule, and what happens when a determination is challenged. The largest enforcement action in this sector to date turned on the absence of exactly that document, rather than on any disputed religious ruling. Ours will exist before we take money.
Challenging a verdict
If you think a determination is wrong, we want to hear it, and we would rather hear it publicly than not at all. Every verdict page will carry a challenge link. Substantive challenges get one of three outcomes, all of them published:
- Corrected — we were wrong; the change and its date are logged
- Explained — the verdict stands, and here is the ratio and filing that produces it
- Referred — this is a methodology question rather than a data question, and it goes to the scholar review
What will not happen is a quiet change with no record. The methodology page carries a change log for exactly this reason.