How it works
Four tests, applied the same way every time
Mizan reads a company's own filings, measures them against AAOIFI Shariah Standard No. 21, and shows you the arithmetic. No black box, no house view, and nothing that changes depending on who is asking.
Step one
You keep the broker you already have
Mizan isn't a brokerage and never holds your money. You link Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood or another supported broker through a regulated aggregator, read-only. Mizan can see holdings and dividends. It cannot place a trade, move cash, or see your password.
If you'd rather not link anything, every screening result works without an account linked at all.
Read-only, through a regulated aggregator
Step two
Every holding is measured, not labelled
Each position is put through the four screens below. You see the measured ratio, the limit it is measured against, how much room is left, and which filing the number came from — so a verdict can always be traced back to a document you could read yourself.
A company that passes
Step three
Purification and zakat keep themselves
When a dividend lands, Mizan applies that company's impermissible-income share to that specific payment and adds the result to a ledger. Nothing is estimated from a form. Zakat uses the methodology you or your scholar choose, and the app does the arithmetic rather than the choosing.
Purification, line by line
Accrued from the dividends that actually reached your account, not estimated from a form.
The screens
What AAOIFI Standard 21 actually asks
Four questions. A company has to pass all four — which is why a single failure is enough, and why a single unanswered question means Mizan can't call it compliant.
Screen one
Business activity
Is the core business permissible? Alcohol, gambling, conventional lending, pork, adult entertainment and tobacco are out. Revenue from incidental impermissible activity has to stay under 5%.
Screen two
Interest-bearing debt
Interest-bearing debt must be under 30% of market capitalisation. Because the denominator is the share price, this ratio moves even when the company does nothing at all.
Screen three
Interest-bearing securities
Cash and interest-bearing instruments must also be under 30% of market capitalisation. A company sitting on a very large cash pile can fail this while being otherwise unremarkable.
Screen four
Impermissible income
Income from impermissible sources — interest above all — must be under 5% of total revenue. This is the screen companies most often don't break out in their filings.
The part most screeners hide
A ratio can cross its limit with no new borrowing
Two of the four screens are measured against market capitalisation. A company that borrows nothing new can still cross the debt limit if its share price falls far enough — and the first you'd know about it is a status change.
So Mizan shows the distance, not just the verdict: how far the price can fall before the screen breaks, and whether the ratio has been climbing quarter on quarter.
Hikma Outlook · published research
Compliance outlook
Estimated chance it is still under its limit in 12 months
Likely between 90% and 98%
Most sensitive screen: interest-bearing securities
- Interest-bearing securities is at 3.0% against a 30% limit.
- A 90% fall in the share price would cross that limit with no new borrowing.
This is an estimate. The status above is the fact.
Honesty
What Mizan won't do
Not every company discloses enough to measure every screen. When a figure isn't there, the app says the screen was not measured and refuses to describe it as passed. A missing number is never rounded down to zero.
Where Mizan hasn't yet read a company's filings itself, the verdict comes from a ratings provider (Zoya) and the app says so on the security, screen by screen. A rated verdict and a verdict Mizan computed are never presented as the same thing.
A company Mizan can’t fully measure
Questions people actually ask
Is a compliant status a religious ruling?
No. It's a reading of a company's filings against a published standard, and it's the same for everyone. Scholars differ on several of these questions, and on anything that turns on your own circumstances you should speak to a qualified scholar. Mizan does the arithmetic; it doesn't issue rulings.
Does Mizan tell me what to buy?
No, and it is built so it can't. A status describes a security. It is not a recommendation, and nowhere in the app is a forward-looking figure scaled to the size of your position — the research deliberately deals in percentages only.
What happens when a holding stops being compliant?
You get told, with the screen that broke and by how much. What to do about it is your decision; the app presents the fact and the reasoning, not an instruction.
How current are the numbers?
Ratios are computed from the most recent filing a company has made, and the app shows that filing's date on the security. Market-capitalisation figures move with the price, so a ratio can shift between filings without the company reporting anything new.
Can Mizan move my money?
No. Brokerage access is read-only and Mizan is not a broker-dealer. It can read holdings and dividends to screen them. It cannot trade, transfer, or withdraw.
15,244 securities screened so far
Counted live, from the same database the app reads.