Issue 01 · The House · Issue 02 · The Ledger · not a fatwa
The house is the whole subject.
65 magazine pieces on Islamic finance in Britain — Home Purchase Plans, the premium, Offa and StrideUp, the Gatehouse book sale, stamp duty, the rest of the money — plus the tools and primers.
How to read a ruling
- Generally prohibited. A stipulated increase on a loan, or a core haram trade.
- Generally permissible. Worship or a structure that is clean when the documents match.
- Depends on structure. The name on the leaflet is not enough — the contract decides.
- Scholars split. Both sides are live. This site will not pick a mufti for you.
From the issue
All 65 pieces01 / 01 · The House
The house is the whole subject.
Sukuk, screens, and zakat calculators are the easy pages. The hard page is a terraced house, a 25-year document, and a family that will live inside the fiqh whether the Twitter thread was right or not.
9 min · Editor’s letter
01 / 02 · The House
Three contracts, one front door.
A UK Home Purchase Plan is not a mortgage with Arabic in the recital. It is a partnership, a lease, and a series of sales stacked onto English land. If any layer is fake, the name is decoration.
12 min · Anatomy
01 / 03 · The House
Ijara, musharakah, murabaha — pick the one you actually signed.
British retail mostly sells diminishing musharakah. Ijara is a lease with a promise. Murabaha is a cost-plus sale. Calling all of them ‘Islamic mortgages’ is how the argument stays stupid.
10 min · Structures
01 / 04 · The Market
The Islamic mortgage premium, without the slogan.
Muslims in Britain have paid more for a lawful house. That is a funding problem, a scale problem, and a distribution problem. It is not a proof that the product is fake — and it is not a reason to take the cheaper riba loan.
11 min · The market
01 / 05 · The Market
A rate card from the summer, and how to hold it.
A Q3 2026 snapshot doing the rounds: Offa 4.50, Gatehouse 5.09, Al Rayan 5.14, BLME 5.29, UBL UK 5.35. Useful as a map. Useless as a quote you take to a solicitor.
8 min · Figures
Guides
Read in order, or jump.
Accounts, savings, and the high street
A current account is a tool. A savings rate is a coupon. Islamic banks in the UK mostly use wakala, murabaha, or wadiah — and you should know which one you actually hold.
7 min · Banking
Buying a house without a mortgage
UK “Islamic mortgages” are usually diminishing musharakah or ijara, not a rebranded loan. They cost more, they are still regulated, and the late-payment clause is where a lot of products quietly fail.
9 min · Home
Halal investing without the brochure
A share is a slice of a real business. The screen is two doors: what the company does, then how it is financed. Pass both, purify the rest, and ignore anyone who says “just buy the Islamic ETF” without opening the factsheet.
8 min · Investing
Zakat on a modern balance sheet
2.5% of zakatable wealth above nisab, after a lunar year. The fights are about gold versus silver nisab, jewellery, pensions, and shares you mean to hold.
8 min · Zakat
Built for Britain
Al Rayan, Gatehouse, NEST’s Shariah fund, Help to Buy friction, Plan 5 student finance, Premium Bonds, cash ISAs. The fiqh is global; the paperwork is local.
Browse productsAsk a situation
Describe a decision in plain English. Grok maps it to the relevant contracts and flags where the schools split. It will not pretend to be your mufti.
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