Every halal-investing screen rests on a fiqh doctrine the corpus never stated outright: al-aghlabiyya wa al-tabaʿiyya — majority and subordination.
Every halal-investing screen rests on a fiqh doctrine the corpus never stated outright: al-aghlabiyya wa al-tabaʿiyya — majority and subordination. Resolution No. 226 (10/23) 'Majority and Subordination in Financial Transactions: Cases, Criteria, and Conditions for their Achievement' is the OIC Fiqh Academy's settled ruling on it: when may a ṣukūk or a share be freely traded even though its assets are a mix of physical property, usufruct, money and debt? The answer is not a slogan but a criterion — the tangible side must be the majority, or the security must be genuinely subordinate to a living, working enterprise — and the ruling closes the loophole by name: subordination may not be used 'as an excuse or a trick to turn debts into ṣukūk'.
What this source says
THE DOCTRINE UNDER EVERY HALAL SCREEN. Ask why a Shariah stock or ṣukūk screen tolerates a mixed balance sheet at all — why a company or a certificate whose assets are partly cash and partly receivables can still be lawful to buy and sell — and the honest answer is a classical fiqh doctrine, not a modern compromise: al-aghlabiyya wa al-tabaʿiyya, majority and subordination. A thing is judged by what predominates in it, and a subordinate element follows the ruling of what it is subordinate to. Resolution No. 226 (10/23) 'Majority and Subordination in Financial Transactions: Cases, Criteria, and Conditions for their Achievement' is where the OIC Fiqh Academy states that doctrine as a settled, operative ruling and applies it, item by item, to the trading of ṣukūk, investment units and shares. The corpus already carries the Academy's rulings on financial markets (Res 63) and on investment certificates (Res 30); Res 226 supplies the criterion that tells you WHEN a security built on a mixed pool of assets may change hands, and when trading it is really the forbidden sale of debt (bayʿ al-dayn) wearing a certificate.
IT IS SETTLED, NOT DEFERRED. Res 226 is the finished ruling on a subject the Academy had earlier held open. Its predecessor, Res 214 (10/22), examined the same title and closed by assigning 'the Secretariat of the Academy to establish a scientific expert committee to present its conclusions to the Council at its next session' — an explicit deferral. Res 226, at the following session, 'Resolves' the matter: four numbered heads of principle followed by two applied sections (ṣukūk and investment units; shares), and it closes on 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.' with no recommendations left dangling. Where the corpus already distinguishes a live ruling from a postponed one, this is squarely the former.
WHAT PREDOMINATES DECIDES (MAJORITY). The first rule is the majority rule, and the Academy fixes it precisely. Where a security's assets are 'mingled and consist of money, debts, physical properties, usufructs/benefits', it may be traded at a negotiated price 'provided that majority would consist of physical properties and usufruct/benefits.' The criterion is not left to taste: 'The criteria for this is that physical properties and usufruct/benefits should exceed one half' — the tangible and usufruct side must be more than half of the pool. Below that line, what is really being exchanged is money and debt, and the sale reverts to the rulings of ṣarf (currency exchange) and debt, not the free trading of an enterprise. This is the exact fiqh the halal-investing reader meets as a tangible-asset ratio on a screening report; Res 226 is where the ratio's logic is stated, in words, by the Academy that anchors it.
A LIVING ENTERPRISE CARRIES ITS OWN ASSETS (SUBORDINATION). The second rule reaches the cases the majority rule alone would trip over. The Academy states that 'the principle of subordination (subordination of the subordinate to the subordinated) is well established in Shariah', and rules that 'it is permissible to apply this principle in trading financial securities, provided the existence of the subordinated is assured.' The test of that existence is concrete: 'The criteria of verifying the existence of the subordinated is the presence of activity, work, and the responsible entity (institution or company) in transforming money.' Where a genuine operating business stands behind the security — real activity, real work, a real entity turning capital into goods and services — its cash and receivables are subordinate to that enterprise, and so 'It is then permissible to trade securities without worrying about the percentage of money and debts in its assets'. One guardrail is attached: 'the subordinated asset/entity should remain in existence throughout all trading stages.' The enterprise must be alive the whole time; you cannot ride subordination on a business that has ceased to operate.
THE LOOPHOLE, CLOSED BY NAME. What makes Res 226 belong on a riba-free site is not only what it permits but what it forbids as a trick. The fourth head names the abuse directly: 'it is not permissible to make the legal permission of trading securities based on the principle of subordination' when it is used 'as an excuse or a trick to turn debts into ṣukūk' — dressing a pool that is really debts and money in just enough physical property and usufruct 'as a majority which enable their securitization.' In plain terms: you may not manufacture a nominal tangible majority, or invoke a token enterprise, simply to make an instrument that is in substance a tradable debt look Shariah-tradable. The doctrine is a criterion for genuineness, not a laundering rule — and the Academy says so in the ruling itself.
APPLIED TO ṢUKŪK. The applied section turns the two principles into concrete tradability calls that map onto how sukuk actually behave. 'It is permissible to trade ṣukūk if the majority of its assets are physical properties, usufruct/benefits or services, after subscription closure and activity commencement.' But structures that resolve to pure debt are ring-fenced: 'It is not permissible to trade Salam Ṣukūk because this is selling debts.' and 'It is not permissible to trade Murābaḥah ṣukūk after selling and delivering Murābaḥah items to the purchaser because it is selling debts.' — because at that point the ṣukūk holder owns a receivable, and selling a receivable at a negotiated price is bayʿ al-dayn. Equity-like structures ride the subordination rule: 'It is permissible to trade mushārakah, muḍārabah, and wakālah bil istithmār ṣukūk (ṣukūk investment through agency) after subscription closure and after fulfilling criteria of the subordinated asset'. The pattern is consistent: what represents a share in a working venture is tradable; what has collapsed into a fixed claim for money is not.
APPLIED TO SHARES. The same logic governs company shares, building on 'the Academy resolution no. 63 on Financial Markets'. Two boundaries mark the extremes. 'It is not permissible to trade companies shares if their assets constitute only debts, except when conforming to Shariah rulings on debts transactions.' And a company that is still only a pot of cash is not yet a tradable enterprise: 'It is not permissible to trade companies shares if their assets consist of money only', the Academy rules, until — the ruling continues — 'before a portion of its financial capital' … 'turns into fixed assets'. Only once capital has begun to become a real, working business does the share represent something other than money-for-money. Between those extremes sits the ordinary listed company with a mixed balance sheet, and there the majority-and-subordination criteria decide: is the tangible side the majority, or is a genuine operating enterprise present to which the cash and receivables are subordinate?
WHY IT MATTERS FOR A RIBA-FREE PORTFOLIO. Muslim investors are handed screens — tangible-asset ratios, business-activity tests, tolerances for incidental interest income — and told they are Shariah-compliant without being shown the reasoning underneath. Res 226 is that reasoning, from the Academy itself: a security is lawful to trade when it genuinely represents a share in real assets and real enterprise, judged by what predominates (majority) or by a living business that carries its incidental cash and debt (subordination); it is not lawful to trade when it has become, in substance, a claim for money — and no arranged 'majority' or nominal enterprise may be used to disguise that. Read this way, a screening ratio stops being an arbitrary number and becomes what the Academy intended it to be: a test of whether you are buying a business or buying a debt. That distinction is the whole of riba-free investing, and Res 226 is where the OIC Fiqh Academy sets it down.
Wording inside quotation marks is quoted from the source. The rest is this notebook’s summary of it — read the original before relying on it.
Provenance
- Compiled from
- Compiled 2026-07-23 from the International Islamic Fiqh Academy's OWN OFFICIAL ENGLISH text of the resolution. PRIMARY AND SOLE AUTHORITY FOR EVERY VERBATIM SPAN ATTRIBUTED TO RES 226: the IIFA Official Edition (Resolutions and Recommendations of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, Oct 2021), Resolution No. 226 (10/23), 23rd session, al-Madinah al-Munawwarah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 28 October – 1 November 2018. Every quoted span machine-verified verbatim against that source under a canonical normalisation (build_res226.py; audit_res226.py re-extracts every quote from the finished prose and re-verifies). The ruling's own numeric criteria (a tangible majority exceeding one half; a capital-conversion threshold for money-only shares) are conveyed in the Academy's OWN words rather than as reproduced figures; no provider, scheme, scholar, board, rate, fee, statute or regulator is asserted, and no Qur'an verse or hadith wording, grading or citation number is reproduced.
- Source
- PRIMARY TEXT (full title; 23rd-session city, country and dates; the 'Resolves' with its four numbered heads — Res 30 confirmation / subordination / majority / anti-trick — and the two applied sections on ṣukūk-and-investment-units and shares, building on Res 63, closing on 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.'). International Islamic Fiqh Academy, Official Edition (Oct 2021), Resolution No. 226 (10/23). Every verbatim span machine-verified against this source (build_res226.py, keyed by block, plus two settledness negative controls Res 77 (8/8) and Res 122 (4/13); audit_res226.py re-extracts every quote from the finished prose and re-verifies). Diffed against the corpus on disk to confirm UNCOVERED before writing: the corpus held the financial-markets ruling (Res 63) and investment-certificates ruling (Res 30) that Res 226 cites and builds upon, but NO primary OIC resolution on the majority/subordination DOCTRINE that governs when a mixed-asset security may be traded — the fiqh criterion beneath every Shariah stock/ṣukūk screen.
- School / basis
- Comparative fiqh of al-aghlabiyya (majority) and al-tabaʿiyya (subordination) applied to the trading of financial securities, with a PRIMARY OIC collective text. Resolution No. 226 (10/23), 23rd session (al-Madinah al-Munawwarah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 28 October – 1 November 2018). FULLY SETTLED (not recommendation-bearing): it 'Resolves' across four numbered heads — (1) confirming Res 30's rule that securities trading before a company's activity begins is an exchange of cash for cash governed by ṣarf, and debt-transfer rulings apply where assets became debts; (2) the subordination principle — a security backed by a genuine, continuing operating entity (activity, work, a responsible institution transforming money) may be traded without regard to the percentage of money and debts in its assets, provided the subordinated enterprise exists throughout all trading stages; (3) the majority principle — a mingled pool may be traded at a negotiated price only if physical properties and usufruct/benefits are the majority, the criterion being that they 'exceed one half'; (4) the anti-trick clause — subordination may not be used as an excuse or trick to turn debts into ṣukūk and securitize them via a manufactured majority — followed by two applied sections (ṣukūk and investment units; shares, building on Res 63) and closing on 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.' with NO Recommendations section (fully settled like Res 130/132/141/143/157, unlike recommendation-bearing Res 140/145/200/212/224/238). Its predecessor Res 214 (10/22) DEFERRED the same subject to a scientific expert committee for the next session; Res 226 is the finished ruling. Settledness verified: 0 deferral keywords, 0 deferral paraphrases, 21 operative units (6 heads + 15 numbered items). Its value to a riba-free corpus is as the fiqh ENGINE beneath every halal-investing screen: the doctrine that decides when a ṣukūk or share genuinely represents real assets and enterprise (lawful to trade) versus a disguised claim for money (bayʿ al-dayn, not lawful to trade).
- Captured
- 2026-07-23
- Added
- 2026-07-23
- Trust
- Primary or near-primary source with a stable public URL.
Compiler’s note
Added 2026-07-23 (auto-run, P2 corpus). Chosen the instructed way: LISTED content/articles/ and diffed against the source table of contents for a genuinely UNCOVERED, SETTLED, SUBSTANTIVE resolution with strong riba-free relevance. Res 226 (10/23) is the OIC's settled ruling on al-aghlabiyya wa al-tabaʿiyya (majority and subordination) applied to securities trading — the fiqh doctrine beneath every halal-investing screen (tangible-asset ratio; when a ṣukūk or share may be traded versus when trading it is really bayʿ al-dayn). SOURCE UNBLOCK: the primary-source doc earlier runs drew resolution text from (/tmp) had been cleared, blocking the corpus track (run 10 was correctly verify-only). This run re-downloaded the AUTHORITATIVE IIFA Official Edition PDF from the exact URL cited by the existing corpus and PERSISTED it durably at .audit/sources/IIFA-Official-Edition-Oct-2021.{pdf,txt} (surviving temp clears, as run 10 recommended); PROVED the extraction is byte-compatible with what prior runs used by running audit_res145.py and audit_res129.py against it — BOTH re-verified clean (AUDIT PASSED). Re-checked ON DISK: UNCOVERED (no content/articles/*resolution-226* file; the corpus held Res 63/Res 30 which Res 226 CITES and builds on, but no primary ruling on the majority/subordination doctrine those screens rest on). SETTLED ('Resolves' across four numbered heads + two applied sections; NO defer/postpone token of any kind — the keyword gate is vacuously clean). Its predecessor Res 214 (10/22) is a genuine DEFERRAL of the same subject (assigns a scientific expert committee to report at the next session) — used here as the documented contrast, not quoted as Res 226's own words. FULLY SETTLED (no Recommendations section: closes directly on 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.'; the build gate ASSERTS the Res 226 block carries no Recommendation-section token, so a future edition adding one would fail loudly and the fully-settled claim stays honest — unlike recommendation-bearing Res 140/145/200/212/224/238). SUBSTANTIVE (the majority criterion 'exceed one half'; the subordination principle + its existence test; the anti-trick clause; and the applied ṣukūk/share tradability calls). THREE SETTLEDNESS GATES clean on the primary: 0 keyword, 0 paraphrase, 21 operative units (6 heads + 15 numbered). PARAPHRASE-GATE ROBUSTNESS: the block cites Res 196's TITLE 'Pursuit of Research in Islamic Ṣukūk' — a research programme Res 226 confirms as part of its OWN settled ruling, NOT a deferral of Res 226. On the raw block the phrase is vacuously clean (line-break split); the gate's deferral-paraphrase lookahead for that phrase was widened to also exclude the citation's in-Islamic wording (not only an on-Islamic form) so it stays correct even on flattened text, while the negative controls (Res 77 'commission further research'; Res 122 bare 'Postponement') still bite. TWO NEGATIVE CONTROLS, both proven deferrals: (1) Res 77 (8/8) caught by the PARAPHRASE gate with NO keyword; (2) Res 122 (4/13) caught by BOTH gates. FIGURES — HANDLED, NOT FABRICATED: Res 226 states two operative numeric criteria (a tangible majority that must be more than one half; and a capital-conversion threshold for money-only shares). Both are conveyed in the Academy's OWN word-form — 'should exceed one half' (quoted verbatim, the exact criterion, losslessly) and the money-only-shares rule quoted verbatim with the capital-conversion requirement shown via an honest ellipsis ('before a portion of its financial capital' … 'turns into fixed assets'). The source's parenthetical numeric restatements are deliberately NOT reproduced as bare figures; NO percent or currency token appears anywhere in the entry, so the corpus's standing no-figure discipline holds and the audit's no-figure assertion passes. Spans that cross the source's mid-sentence page numbers (554/555/556) were quoted only up to the break — canon() strips a standalone page number, and every quoted fragment was chosen to avoid crossing one. DROPPED per no-fab: no provider, scheme, scholar, board, rate, fee, statute or regulator; NO scriptural text (the closing 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.' is the resolution's own devotional formula). The fiqh-engine-beneath-halal-screening reading is Res 226's OWN doctrine applied to its OWN worked examples; the cross-reference to the corpus's existing Res 63/Res 30 entries is the article's framing, labelled as such, not put in Res 226's mouth. GLOBAL-FIRST: universal fiqh of securities-trading permissibility, no AU baseline. VERIFICATION: build_res226.py = every hand-listed span across three blocks (keyed by block; union never used) + both negative-control proofs + the three settledness gates + the fully-settled (no-Recommendations) assertion. audit_res226.py = every quote re-extracted from the FINISHED JSON on disk and re-verified against the source (multi-block haystack: Res 226/77/122), allow-list empty; no-figure + no-scripture assertions hold. Articles 137->138, corpus total 235->236. RENDER PROOF: built /corpus HTML shows the updated Articles/Total counts. Clean rm -rf .next && npm run build = 208/208 static pages; npm run lint = exit 0 (0/0). PUNCH-LIST FULLY TICKED (P0/P1/P3 + wave2 5-8 verified closed on disk; P2 corpus is the standing deepening track, now UNBLOCKED by the durable .audit/sources/ copy). NEXT candidate: keep diffing content/articles/ against the source TOC. Res 215 (11/22) Cooperative Insurance is settled but heavily REAFFIRMS covered Res 200 (poor no-fab candidate). AVOID the whole-subject deferrals already logged (Res 77 (8/8), Res 87 (4/9), Res 122 (4/13), Res 124 (6/13), Res 187 (2/20), Res 188 (3/20), Res 214 (10/22)) and Res 237 (8/24); ALWAYS verify a real 'Resolves', RUN ALL THREE SETTLEDNESS GATES, and check operative-unit count >=5 before writing.
Topics
majoritysubordinationaghlabiyyatabaiyyashariah-screeninghalal-investingsukuk-tradingshare-tradingsecurities-tradingtangible-asset-ratiobay-al-daynsale-of-debtssarfcurrency-exchangesalam-sukukmurabaha-sukukmusharakah-sukukmudarabah-sukukwakala-bil-istithmaristisna-sukukfinancial-marketsinvestment-unitscompany-sharesanti-trick-clausesecuritizationiifaoic-fiqh-academyresolution-226resolution-214-deferralriba-free-wealthhalal-portfolio-screening23rd-session-madinah
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