Salaams all,

I've been a lurker a while but something has been bugging me a bit. I was trying to gain an understanding of investing in companies that are compliant with the principles of islam (not I did not say shariah!). I know there are all sorts of posts by all sorts of people who talk about "shariah compliance" of companies, but that is not really my question!

If we are all meant to be good decent beings, I would hope that translates to formation of enterprises/companies that also rule by some ethical standards. Ok, so the basic bits of not investing in alcohol, tobacco, weapons, pornography is fine, but let's look beyond that.

I think a company should not exploit it's workers.
It should not utilise direct supply chains that exploit workers. Secondary chains are hard to identify so I can't blame a company working in good faith for that!
It should have transparent accounting structures; no corrupt government run companies please!
It should have some kind of environmental impact policy since in the Quran we are told to look after the environment. I agree that no company is perfect in this regard, but at least an effort is better than nothing.

The above are largely common sense, but I wonder if there is additional criteria in the Quran that I should be looking for? Oh I'm aware of regular western criteria of ensuring the company is financially viable. I'm not looking into that for this question.

Why am I doing this? I guess for research in a sense, so that inshala if I set up a company in the future I can have some level of social conscience that I'm doing my best to live by Allah's commands even in business.

Interesting points are welcome

Wa-salaam

Ronnie