Halal investing globally · regulatory landscape · exchange coverage

Halal investing by country

Islamic finance is a global ecosystem with very different regulatory shapes in different countries. A Muslim investor in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, or Indonesia operates in an environment where listed equities are screened by default; a Muslim investor in the US, UK, or Germany operates in a market where screening is the investor's own responsibility. This page is the country-by-country guide: the regulators, the dedicated Islamic indices, the exchange coverage, and how invest-like applies a uniform AAOIFI Standard 21 screen across all of it.

Exchanges: 10+
UI languages: 5
Tickers: 12,500+
Screen: AAOIFI 21

Country profiles

Major Islamic-finance markets, one at a time

United States

The US has the largest universe of Shariah-compliant listed equities by absolute count: roughly 1,500 names passing the AAOIFI Standard 21 screen out of 12,500+ indexed tickers across the NYSE, Nasdaq, and NYSE Arca. There is no US regulator dedicated to Islamic finance and no legal recognition of Shariah-compliance as a regulatory category. The SEC regulates US-listed equities uniformly without any Islamic-finance overlay; Shariah-compliance is a private categorisation maintained by individual screening services (invest-like, SP Funds, Wahed Invest) and index providers (S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell, MSCI).

US-resident Muslim investors have the widest choice of access methods of any market globally. They can hold individual US-listed equities directly through any US brokerage (Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Robinhood, Interactive Brokers). They can hold halal ETFs (SPUS, HLAL, UMMA, AMZA) on standard brokerage platforms. They can use halal robo-advisors (Wahed Invest, Zoya). The lack of regulatory infrastructure means investors do their own due diligence on which screening standard to follow; the de-facto retail reference is AAOIFI, with DJII/S&P/MSCI as commonly-cited alternatives.

United Kingdom

The UK is Europe's most-developed Islamic-finance retail market. The London Stock Exchange hosts the FTSE Shariah index family (FTSE Global Equity Shariah, FTSE UK Shariah, FTSE Pakistan Shariah, FTSE Bursa Malaysia Shariah) maintained in partnership with Yasaar Limited as Shariah advisor. The Financial Conduct Authority regulates Shariah advisors and Islamic financial advisers under the same standard advice rules that govern conventional advisers - there is no Islamic-finance-specific licensing tier.

UK retail Muslim investors have access to multiple LSE-listed UCITS halal ETFs (ISWD and ISDE from iShares/BlackRock are the largest) and several FCA-regulated halal robo-advisors (Wahed UK, Algbra, Kestrl). Single-stock investing through standard UK brokerages (Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, Trading 212, Interactive Investor) gives access to the same US-listed names invest-like covers. The UK is also the European hub for Islamic banking (Al Rayan Bank, Gatehouse Bank) and sukuk issuance.

Germany

Germany has a sizeable Muslim population (approximately 5 million) but a smaller dedicated Islamic-finance infrastructure than the UK. BaFin (the German financial regulator) does not maintain a Shariah-specific regulatory category. There is no German-listed halal ETF; German Muslim investors instead access UCITS halal ETFs listed on XETRA or LSE - ISWD and ISDE are both available through any German broker. Trade Republic, comdirect, ING DiBa, Scalable Capital, and DEGIRO all support these instruments.

Direct stock investing for German Muslim investors works the same as for any German retail investor: open a brokerage account, buy US-listed or European-listed equities, apply the AAOIFI screen privately. invest-like's German-language UI specifically targets this segment - the same 12,500-ticker screen, in German, for users who prefer working in their native language. The German Muslim investor market is growing in sophistication, with the share of self-directed investors (rather than robo-advised) tracking the broader German FinTech trend toward direct equity ownership.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia hosts the Middle East's largest stock exchange (Tadawul, formally the Saudi Exchange). The Capital Market Authority (CMA) regulates listed equities. The National Sharia Council and individual Shariah supervisory boards at listed banks oversee compliance with Islamic principles. Crucially, Saudi Arabia has no conventional-bank or conventional-insurance listings on Tadawul - those business structures do not exist in the Saudi listed market. All Saudi-listed banks operate under Islamic banking structures (Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi National Bank, Riyad Bank, Banque Saudi Fransi); all Saudi-listed insurance companies operate as Takaful (Islamic insurance).

For a Muslim investor in Saudi Arabia, the entire Tadawul universe is essentially pre-screened compliant by national-regulatory design. The AAOIFI Standard 21 screen is still applied at the institutional level by Islamic fund managers, but for the retail investor the question of “is this Saudi stock halal” rarely needs asking. Foreign investors accessing Tadawul use the Qualified Foreign Investor (QFI) framework or the Saudi-listed ADR equivalents available on the LSE for the largest names.

Malaysia

Malaysia is the global pioneer in regulated Islamic capital markets. The Securities Commission Malaysia maintains an official Shariah-Compliant Securities list (updated semi-annually based on the screening methodology of its Shariah Advisory Council). Approximately 70-80 percent of Bursa Malaysia listings are officially designated Shariah-compliant. Malaysia is also home to the world's largest sukuk market by issuance volume, and hosts the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) and the International Shariah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA), both leading Islamic-finance research institutions.

Bursa Suq Al-Sila is a Bursa Malaysia-operated global Islamic commodity-trading platform used by Islamic banks worldwide for tawarruq-based liquidity-management transactions. The Malaysian retail Muslim investor benefits from the most comprehensive Islamic infrastructure in Asia: Shariah-compliant unit trusts, Islamic ETFs, Islamic robo-advisors (Wahed, Hejaz, Versa), and dedicated Islamic stockbroking. The Malaysian Shariah methodology is broadly AAOIFI-aligned with some Malaysian-specific interpretations on debt-ratio computation.

Indonesia

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority country by population. The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX, formerly known as Jakarta Stock Exchange) operates a dedicated Shariah Index (ISSI, the Indonesia Sharia Stock Index) covering approximately 600+ Indonesian-listed Shariah-compliant stocks. The National Sharia Council of the Indonesian Ulama Council (DSN-MUI) is the supreme Shariah authority overseeing the screening methodology. The Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) regulates the listed market.

Indonesia's Shariah screening is broadly aligned with AAOIFI Standard 21 but with Indonesia-specific interpretations: DSN-MUI permits up to 45 percent debt-to-asset (looser than AAOIFI's 30 percent debt-to-market-cap) and uses slightly different non-permissible-income thresholds. The Indonesian retail halal investing ecosystem is growing rapidly, with dedicated Shariah mutual funds (reksadana syariah), Islamic robo-advisors (Bibit Syariah, Bareksa Syariah), and Shariah-compliant stockbroking offered by major brokerages.

United Arab Emirates

The UAE hosts two major listed-equity exchanges (the Dubai Financial Market, DFM, and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, ADX) plus the Nasdaq Dubai dual-listing venue. Both DFM and ADX operate dedicated Islamic indices. The Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) regulates listed equities at the federal level; the Higher Shariah Authority operates at the central-bank level for Islamic banking, and individual Shariah supervisory boards operate at the listed-company level. AAOIFI standards are formally adopted by the UAE central bank and used as primary guidance.

Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) operates as an Islamic-finance hub with separate common-law-based regulatory infrastructure. The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) regulates DIFC-licensed entities, including Islamic asset managers and Islamic fintechs. UAE-resident Muslim investors have access to a wide range of Islamic instruments (DFM-listed and ADX-listed Shariah-compliant equities, UAE-domiciled Islamic mutual funds, sukuk) plus access to US and UK markets through major brokerages with Dubai branches.

Other markets worth noting

Turkey has a growing Islamic-finance sector centred on participation banking (the Turkish term for Islamic banking). Borsa Istanbul operates a Participation Index covering Shariah-compliant Turkish-listed equities. Pakistan's Karachi Stock Exchange maintains an Al-Meezan KMI 30 index of Shariah-compliant blue chips. Qatar Stock Exchange operates a dedicated Islamic Index, with significant participation by Qatar Islamic Bank and Masraf Al Rayan. Bahrain's Bahrain All Share Index includes a Shariah-compliant subset overseen by AAOIFI directly. Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have emerging but smaller Islamic-finance infrastructures. The point: virtually every Muslim-majority country and every market with a significant Muslim minority has some form of regulated Shariah-compliance overlay.

How invest-like serves global investors

One screen, ten exchanges, five languages

invest-like applies the AAOIFI Standard 21 screen uniformly across every covered exchange. A US investor reading the verdict on Apple, a German investor reading the verdict on SAP, a Saudi investor reading the verdict on Al Rajhi Bank, and a Malaysian investor reading the verdict on Maybank are all reading the output of the same deterministic implementation. This uniformity is the value proposition for global investors: the screen does not change based on the user's country, the user's language, or the listing venue of the stock.

The UI is available in English, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese - the five languages that together cover the largest population of Muslim and Muslim-adjacent retail investors in Europe and the Americas. Arabic is not currently supported in the UI (a planned expansion), but the underlying screen and methodology pages have been written in English-as-canonical so they can be auto-translated by users via browser tooling without losing semantic precision.

Coverage spans 10+ major exchanges: NYSE, Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, AMEX (US); LSE, XETRA, Euronext (Europe); Tadawul (Saudi Arabia, partial); Bursa Malaysia (partial); IDX (Indonesia, partial). Coverage is deepest on US-listed names where the fundamentals data is most complete; international coverage is strongest for large-caps and weakens as you move down the cap spectrum. The coverage roadmap continues to broaden international depth as fundamentals data quality improves on emerging-market listings.

For investors whose local regulatory framework uses a different Shariah standard than AAOIFI (the Indonesian DSN-MUI standard, the Malaysian Securities Commission standard, the Saudi National Sharia Council standard), the recommendation is the same as for individual scholar disagreements: treat AAOIFI as the starting point, use the per-stock pages to see the exact numbers, and apply your local standard's additional criteria on top. The transparency of the per-stock breakdown is specifically designed to support this kind of cross-standard reconciliation.

Regulatory at-a-glance

Where AAOIFI sits in each jurisdiction

Country	Regulator	Dedicated Islamic index?	AAOIFI status
United States	SEC	Via index providers (S&P, FTSE, MSCI)	De-facto retail reference
United Kingdom	FCA	FTSE Shariah family	Industry guidance
Germany	BaFin	Via UCITS ETFs (XETRA)	Industry guidance
Saudi Arabia	CMA + National Sharia Council	Entire Tadawul (default Sharia)	Primary guidance
Malaysia	SC Malaysia + SAC	Bursa Malaysia Shariah-Compliant list	Primary guidance (with MY overlay)
Indonesia	OJK + DSN-MUI	ISSI (Indonesia Sharia Stock Index)	Reference (with ID overlay)
UAE	SCA + Higher Shariah Authority	DFM and ADX Islamic indices	Adopted (federal level)
Bahrain	CBB	Bahrain All Share Sharia subset	Binding law

Frequently asked

Country-level questions, answered

Which country has the most halal stocks?

The United States has the largest universe of Shariah-compliant listed equities at roughly 1,500 names passing the AAOIFI Standard 21 screen out of 12,500+ indexed US-listed tickers. This is more than any other single country in absolute terms because the US has the largest equity market in the world by both count and capitalisation. Saudi Arabia's Tadawul exchange has a higher percentage of compliant names (most Saudi listings are screened compliant by default because they are Shariah-only listed) but a smaller absolute count of around 200 tickers.

Is AAOIFI required by law anywhere?

AAOIFI standards are adopted as binding law in Bahrain, Oman, Syria, Sudan, Jordan, and the Qatar Financial Centre. They are used as primary guidance in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (at the federal level), Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan. In other jurisdictions (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France) AAOIFI is not legally required but is the de-facto reference standard used by retail screening services, fund managers, and Islamic advisors operating in those markets.

Can a Muslim investor in Germany buy halal stocks?

Yes. Germany has no dedicated Shariah-finance regulatory framework but also no legal barrier to a German-resident Muslim investor screening their own portfolio against AAOIFI or any other Islamic standard. Practical access is straightforward: any German brokerage (Trade Republic, comdirect, ING DiBa, Scalable Capital, DEGIRO) supports the same US-listed and European-listed instruments. The growth of UCITS-domiciled halal ETFs like ISWD (BlackRock's iShares MSCI World Islamic) has made halal ETF access in Germany identical to halal ETF access in any other European market.

What is Bursa Malaysia's role in Islamic finance?

Bursa Malaysia is one of the world's pioneers in regulated Islamic capital markets. The Securities Commission Malaysia maintains an official Shariah-Compliant Securities list (updated semi-annually) covering Malaysian-listed equities that pass a Shariah Advisory Council screen. Approximately 70-80 percent of Bursa Malaysia listings are Shariah-compliant by official designation. Bursa also operates Bursa Suq Al-Sila, a global Islamic commodity trading platform used for tawarruq transactions across Asian and Middle Eastern Islamic banks.

How does the Saudi Tadawul compare?

The Tadawul (Saudi Exchange) is the largest exchange in the Middle East and the only major exchange where the entire listed universe is screened Shariah-compliant by default. The Saudi Capital Market Authority (CMA) and the National Sharia Council oversee compliance. Listed companies in Saudi Arabia are required to operate within Shariah principles - conventional banks and insurance companies do not exist on Tadawul in their conventional form, only Islamic banks (Al Rajhi, Saudi National Bank) and Takaful (Islamic insurance) operators are listed. This makes the Tadawul a unique environment where halal screening at the individual-stock level is largely redundant.

What about Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country?

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority country by population (around 240 million Muslims). The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) operates a dedicated Shariah Index (Indeks Saham Syariah Indonesia, ISSI) overseen by the National Sharia Council of the Indonesian Ulama Council (DSN-MUI). ISSI covers approximately 600+ Indonesian-listed Shariah-compliant stocks. The screen used is broadly aligned with AAOIFI but with Indonesia-specific interpretations on the debt-ratio denominator (DSN-MUI permits up to 45 percent debt-to-asset, looser than AAOIFI's strict reading).

Does invest-like cover non-US listings?

Yes. invest-like screens 12,500+ tickers spanning US listings (NYSE, Nasdaq, NYSE Arca) plus selected international listings on the London Stock Exchange, Euronext, XETRA, Bursa Malaysia, the Saudi Tadawul, the IDX, and other major exchanges. The same AAOIFI Standard 21 screen is applied uniformly across exchanges. International ticker coverage is broader for large-cap names than for small-caps; fundamentals data availability is the limiting factor. The UI is available in five languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese) to serve global users without requiring a Shariah background outside their country's regulatory framework.

How does halal investing work in the UK?

The UK has the most-developed retail Islamic-finance ecosystem in Europe. The London Stock Exchange hosts dedicated Islamic indices (FTSE Shariah indices, the LSE's Islamic Index). The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulates Shariah advisors operating in the UK under standard financial-advice rules without an Islamic-finance-specific overlay. Wahed Invest, Algbra, and several smaller Islamic robo-advisors are FCA-regulated and serve UK retail Muslim investors directly. LSE-listed UCITS halal ETFs (ISWD, ISDE) are widely accessible through any UK brokerage.

Continue reading

Landing page

/halal/

Live cohort counts, top-25 compliant picks, AAOIFI 4-test summary.

AAOIFI Standard 21

/halal/aaoifi-standard-21/

Full-length explainer of the canonical standard.

By sector

/halal/sectors/

Pass rate by sector and the structural tilt.

AAOIFI vs DJII vs MSCI

/halal/vs-dow-jones-islamic/

Threshold-by-threshold comparison of the major screens.

Halal ETFs

/halal/etfs/

SPUS, HLAL, UMMA, ISDE, ISWD compared with cost analysis.

Full methodology

/methodology/halal/

Every test, every threshold, every ticker override explained.

Regulatory descriptions above are based on the current state of each jurisdiction's Islamic-finance framework. Regulations change; consult local advisors for the contemporaneous position. invest-like applies a uniform AAOIFI Standard 21 screen across all covered exchanges - users in jurisdictions where a different Shariah standard is legally binding should treat the screen as a starting point and apply local additional criteria. Educational only. Not investment advice.