Al-Ershaad translates fiqh al-muamalat into board-ready decisions across five interlocking practice areas.
For fifteen years we have been retained by Islamic banks, sovereign wealth funds, family offices and Shariah-compliant corporates to structure, certify and review the transactions on which their reputations depend — never as a vendor, always as a partner sitting in the room when the Shariah Supervisory Board meets.
A single advisory discipline under one Shariah board, not five adjacent service lines.
The Practice division at Al-Ershaad is built around one conviction: that a sukuk structure, a retail savings product, a family waqf deed, and a second-opinion review on an existing contract are not four different jobs — they are four applications of the same fiqh al-muamalat reasoning, filtered through the same 312-point screening framework and ratified by the same Senior Shariah Advisory Board chaired by Mufti Dr. Yusuf Al-Karim.
That posture matters for the institutional reader. When the Bahrain Shari'a Review Bureau or the Central Bank of Bahrain requests a file from us, it arrives with a single coherent opinion across structuring, certification and ongoing governance — not three disconnected memos from three disconnected firms. Our mandates are retained by 180+ institutions across 14 jurisdictions; 91% of those institutions renewed their advisory engagement the following year, with an average tenure of 6.8 years.
If you are evaluating whether the scope of a structuring question sits within our practice, the orientation below should tell you in under three minutes.
Five practice areas, one Shariah board, one engagement protocol.
Each panel below names the scope, the typical institutional mandate, and the framework section that governs it. Read in order, they describe a complete advisory engagement; read individually, they answer a single question.
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I
Sukuk Structuring
Ijarah, Musharakah, Mudarabah, Murabaha, Istisna and hybrid structures — sovereign, corporate and project finance.
- Typical Mandate
- Lead Shariah advisor on a sovereign or quasi-sovereign issuance, from structuring memorandum through closing and post-issuance reporting.
- Governing Framework
- Framework Sections 1–84, mapped against AAOIFI Shariah Standards 17, 18, 22 and 28.
- Track Record
- Involved in the structuring or review of $14.2 billion in sukuk across 14 jurisdictions since 2009.
We sit beside treasury, legal and the arranger from the term sheet onward — not after. Our role is to refuse the structure that will not survive a regulator's file review, and to redesign it until it does. Every fatwa is drafted simultaneously in Arabic and English by our in-house bilingual desk, and every issuance opinion is delivered with the underlying AAOIFI citation in the margin.
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II
Product Certification
Retail and corporate Shariah certification for banks, takaful operators, asset managers and FinTech issuers.
- Typical Mandate
- External Shariah review and certification of a new product programme, including disclosure documents, marketing collateral and ongoing monitoring.
- Governing Framework
- Framework Sections 85–162, mapped against AAOIFI Shariah Standards 1–35 and the relevant IFSB prudential standard.
- Track Record
- 1,240+ product certifications completed to date, with zero reported non-compliance events across active mandates.
A certification is not a logo. It is a written opinion, signed by named scholars, that survives the institution's regulator, its external auditor, and the AAOIFI peer review process. We refuse the work that cannot be signed — and we tell prospective clients why within the first call.
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III
Shariah Governance
In-house Shariah control framework design, SSB secretariat, policy drafting, and outsourced Internal Shariah Review.
- Typical Mandate
- Build or remediate an institution's Shariah governance framework to AAOIFI Governance Standard No. 1 and the CBB/DFSA Module outline.
- Governing Framework
- Framework Sections 163–224, applied through a five-stage diagnostic spanning board charter, secretariat function, policy library, control testing and reporting.
- Track Record
- Three of the top ten GCC Islamic banks currently operate on a governance framework authored by our practice.
Governance work is the unglamorous part of the practice and the part most often neglected after a regulatory visit. We embed with the SSB secretariat, draft the policy library to a uniform house style, and run the control testing that closes the file when the regulator returns.
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IV
Waqf & Succession
Endowment structuring, family waqf governance, Muslim estate planning, and intergenerational succession for Gulf family offices.
- Typical Mandate
- Design a family waqf to receive operating businesses across two or more generations, integrated with the holding's succession plan.
- Governing Framework
- Framework Sections 225–268, reconciled against UAE Federal Law No. 5 of 2018 on Awqaf and the civil law of the relevant GCC jurisdiction.
- Track Record
- Eight GCC single-family offices and three endowed foundations currently retain the practice on retainer.
Waqf work requires the slower pace of family law and the stricter discipline of Shariah governance applied simultaneously. We bring both, and we work alongside the family's existing legal counsel — never around them.
Second-Opinion Review
An independent reading of a structure, contract or product already opined upon by another firm or in-house Shariah board.
The fifth area is, deliberately, the quietest. A second opinion is requested when an institution needs to know whether a transaction can survive a future challenge — from a regulator, a senior scholar, or a new SSB chair taking office. Our deliverable is a confidential written opinion, with the original opinion redacted, identifying exactly where the prior view is sound, where it is marginal, and where we would refuse the structure outright. Approximately one in seven second-opinion engagements results in a recommendation to redesign before close.
Every mandate, of whatever size, passes through the same 312-point framework.
The proprietary framework is not a checklist. It is a structured reasoning apparatus, written by the Senior Shariah Advisory Board and refined over fifteen years of disputed opinions and overturned precedents. Its first 84 sections govern structuring; the next 78 govern product certification; sections 163 to 224 govern governance; the closing 88 sections govern waqf, succession and second-opinion work.
Its value to the institutional reader is consistency. A sukuk opinion issued from our Dubai office in 2026 will reason through the same 312 questions — in the same order, with the same evidentiary thresholds — as a product opinion issued from our Manama satellite in 2009. That continuity is what the Bahrain Shari'a Review Bureau and the AAOIFI Shariah Board rely upon when accepting our work in their own files.
Al-Ershaad maintains dual licensure as an external Shariah review firm: under the Dubai Financial Services Authority and the Central Bank of Bahrain. Both designations are renewed annually and are available for verification on request.
— A note from the Practice Partners, on behalf of Mufti Dr. Yusuf Al-Karim and the Senior Shariah Advisory Board.
Evidence behind the practice, not promises ahead of it.
The figures below are the same figures appearing in our institutional brochure and on file with the Global Islamic Finance Awards jury.
- $14.2B Certified or reviewed across sukuk, Ijarah, Musharakah and Mudarabah structures since 2009.
- 1,240+ Shariah compliance reviews and product certifications completed to date across our active mandates.
- 180+ Institutional clients across 14 countries, with an annual client retention rate of 91%.
- 6d Average Shariah review turnaround in business days — benchmarked 3.4× faster than the GCC boutique advisory median by IFAAS in 2023.
Bring us a structuring, certification, governance, waqf or second-opinion question. We will tell you, on the call, whether it sits within our practice.
No retainer letter, no obligation, no slide deck. A 45-minute conversation with a Senior Shariah Advisor, held under the firm's professional confidentiality protocol, in which we will either scope the work, decline it honestly, or refer you to a firm better placed to serve you. For board-ready institutions only.