Most "halal crypto" lists you've seen on the internet are just a coin name next to a green checkmark. There's no standard, no source, no methodology you can audit. We built HalalCrypto because a Muslim investor deserves more than someone's opinion stapled to a logo.
Our screener uses an AAOIFI-aligned framework — the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions — because that's the closest thing the modern Islamic finance world has to a settled, multi-jurisdiction standard. We layer in additional guidance from the Saudi Permanent Committee for Ifta, the Shariah Board of Al Rajhi Bank, and several mainstream contemporary scholars on questions the standards don't yet name explicitly.
This post explains what that means, what it does not mean, and how to read every verdict on our site with informed eyes.
What AAOIFI is — and is not
AAOIFI is a Bahrain-based standards body, founded in 1991, that publishes Shariah, accounting, governance, and ethics standards used by Islamic banks and financial institutions across roughly 45 countries. Its Shariah standards are the part relevant to us — they're scholarly resolutions issued by a permanent Shariah board after deliberation and public comment.
What AAOIFI is not: it is not a government regulator, not a court, and not the final word in any single madhab. It is also not infallible — its standards get revised. We treat it as the most rigorous, most-cited, most widely-adopted starting point for screening, and we name the specific standard behind every verdict so you can read it yourself.
The standards we lean on most for crypto questions:
- Shariah Standard No. 17 — financial paper (sukuk) and the line between trading securities and trading interest-bearing debt
- Shariah Standard No. 21 — financial papers (shares and bonds), the screening criteria framework, ownership rules
- AAOIFI standards — sale of debt (bay' al-dayn), the rules around tokenized obligations and lending protocols
- Shariah Standard No. 62 — gold, silver, and currency rules — directly relevant to spot-settlement rules for crypto
The four filters our screener runs
Every coin we review goes through four filters in order. Failing any one of them removes it from our halal allowlist.
1. Riba (interest). Does the protocol's core mechanism generate yield from lending without risk-sharing? Lending protocols that pay a fixed rate to depositors regardless of borrower performance are textbook qardh-with-yield, which is riba. Examples we have flagged: classical compound-lending markets, fixed-rate liquid-staking wrappers, and tokens whose primary utility is interest accrual.
2. Gharar (excessive uncertainty). Is the asset's mechanism transparent enough that a competent investor can know what they own and what could happen to it? Algorithmic stablecoins with hidden depeg pathways, opaque governance with concentrated unilateral power, and tokens whose total supply is unknowable typically fail this filter.
3. Maysir (gambling / zero-sum speculation). Is the primary use of the token gambling-style speculation with no underlying utility? Memecoins built explicitly as zero-sum betting vehicles fail here. Note: volatility alone is not maysir — a real asset that happens to be volatile is not gambling.
4. Underlying activity (impermissible business). Even if mechanics are clean, does the protocol's revenue come from haram activity (alcohol, gambling platforms, pornography, weapons-of-mass-harm, conventional interest-bearing finance)? A token whose business model is "we run an online casino" doesn't get a pass because the smart contract is elegantly designed.
What "AAOIFI-aligned" specifically means
We say aligned, not certified. There is no Shariah board that has rubber-stamped our screener — and we'd be lying if we claimed otherwise. What we do commit to:
- Every halal/haram verdict on the site cites the specific standard, fatwa, or scholar opinion it rests on
- When two sources disagree, we publish both and flag the coin as Review until we resolve it
- We never claim a verdict is universal across all madhabs when it isn't
- Our methodology is in writing at /halal-methodology and is versioned — old verdicts get re-reviewed when the methodology updates
The verdict states you'll see
There are five:
- Halal — passes all four filters with consensus
- Halal (with caveats) — passes filters but has open questions (e.g. governance changes, partial-revenue concerns)
- Review — pending; we have an open question we haven't resolved
- Haram — fails at least one filter with consensus
- Unscreened — not yet reviewed; absence is not endorsement
A coin's state can change. We re-screen when a protocol pivots, when a new standard comes out, or when an underlying revenue source changes materially.
Where the bot fits
The HalalCrypto trading bot only opens spot positions on the halal allowlist — the union of "Halal" and "Halal (with caveats)" coins. It is hard-wired to refuse the haram universe — not even with manual override. The bot is spot-only, non-custodial, and never uses leverage, perpetuals, futures, margin, or interest-bearing yield products. Those wrappers carry their own riba and gharar problems regardless of which coin you're trading underneath.
What we are not claiming
We are not claiming we get every verdict right. We are not claiming this is the only legitimate framework. We are not claiming returns of any size — past performance does not predict future performance. And we are not selling certainty in a domain where serious scholars themselves continue to deliberate.
What we are claiming is this: every verdict on the screener is sourced, named, and dated. If you disagree, you can see exactly which standard or fatwa we're leaning on, and decide whether to overrule us with your own scholar. That transparency is the methodology — not the green checkmark.
→ Review the live screener · Read the methodology in full · Compare the three bot tiers
Originally published on HalalCrypto.
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