Can I wait before selling a losing stock that turned non permissible

  1. Once the shares become non compliant, the ideal is to get rid of the profit made as soon as possible otherwise if it is not possible you can do the cleansing process once you have sold the shares.

  2. There are many way to purify the non shariah compliant income. Some may be stricter than the other. Mufti Zubair Butt has mentioned one way in his fatwa: http://alqalam.org.uk/research-papers/investment-in-stocks-and-shares/
    @ibrahimkhan may share his method with you on this subject.

The easiest way for me is to look at the value of the shares on the day it becomes non compliant (this value might be the actual price or your capital amount: which ever is higher). Any profit made after the compliance day will be considered unlawful (haram). For example up to the day the stock became non compliant (1st of June), its value was @ £200/share. If one week later (7th of June) you sell this share for £250, then £50 is the haram amount which you will have to discharge towards charity.

On the other hand, if on the 7th of June you sold the share for £150, then you will not need to give away anything to purify your wealth. Because we know that up to the 1st of June, the share was valued @ £200 when it was still shariah compliant, so in effect you have not earned any haram income from that day until the day you sold it for £150.
This method would be applicable for any given scenario when:

  1. the stock has been considered non shariah compliant, and
  2. you are in the process of disposing them

And Allah knows best!

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