Shariah Compliance
Core team competency
Goldsand’s shariah work is not outsourced as an afterthought. Our core team members like Tariq ↗ have sat at the feet of scholars and judges in Egypt, Algeria, and Mauritania studying and teaching Islamic finance for more than a decade. Every product decision and design starts with the intention to find the truest and most just understanding of Islamic finance ethos.
However, in the pursuit of excellence and the highest bar, we work with far more experienced scholars in the field to set the standards and judge our work by them.
The Shariah board
Sheikh Farrukh Habib is one of the leading scholars working at the intersection of Islamic finance and digital assets. He served as a Shariah researcher and advisor for the Central Bank of Malaysia through ISRA. Previously, he completed the traditional 8-year Islamic sciences program at Jamia Uloom Al-Islamia, Banori Town; holds an MSc in Banking and Finance from Queen Mary University of London; and earned a PhD in Islamic Finance from INCEIF in Malaysia. He authored one of the earliest institutional Shariah analyses of Bitcoin and currently serves on the Shariah board of Zakat Coin alongside Sh Joe Bradford and Sh Taha Abdulbaseer. Sh Farrukh further received an ijāzah in hadith from Mufti Taqi Usmani.
After 5 years of shariah studies in France at the likes of Institute Al-Ghazali, Sh Saifullah specialized in fiqh under top scholars from premier institutes in Mauritania and Egypt, like Sh Mishri Al-Hādi of Mahdarah Nabagiyyah and Sh Mahmoud Shabieb of Al-Azhar University from whom he received ijāzah in fatwa including Islamic finance. He currently teaches Islamic finance for Al Majd Seminary.
External shariah auditors
Sheikh Taha Abdul-Basser is one of America’s pioneering Islamic-finance scholars. A former Harvard Muslim Chaplain and Harvard Business School instructor, he served as Shariah adviser to Wahed’s HLAL ETF at launch, and his firm advised the first Shariah-compliant ETF ever listed in the U.S. He currently serves on the Shariah boards of Stearns Salaam Banking and Fajr Capital.