Who Sits on South Africa's Shariah Boards? Banks, Funds and Takaful Compared (2026)

Seventeen named scholars hold the 42 published Shariah board seats at the 13 South African banks, fund managers, takaful operators and medical scheme arrangements that disclose who certifies them, and seven of those scholars hold 30 of the seats. Mufti Ahmed Suliman sits on seven boards, Mufti Yusuf Suliman on six and Mufti Zaid Haspatel on five, so when you buy a halal product in South Africa one of three men has very likely signed off on it. No regulator appoints, licenses or vets any of them: the Prudential Authority and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority supervise the institutions, not the fatwas. This guide names every board, records the latest signed certificate we could find, shows where the same scholars recur, and measures each institution against the AAOIFI benchmark of an independent board of at least three members. Rosters were taken from each institution's own website or PDF on 19 and 20 October 2026.

Why the names matter more in South Africa than elsewhere

In Malaysia, Bahrain, Pakistan and the UAE, a central Shariah authority at the regulator sets minimum standards for who may sit on an institution's board, how many members it needs and what it must publish. South Africa has none of that, as we set out in Who certifies Shariah compliance in South Africa? Nobody official. The Banks Act, the Insurance Act and the Collective Investment Schemes Control Act are silent on Shariah governance, and Section 24JA of the Income Tax Act recognises Mudarabah, Murabaha, diminishing Musharaka and sukuk for tax without saying who decides that a product is one of those things. The only check on a South African Shariah board is the market: whether customers, distributors and ulama bodies accept the names.

That makes the international benchmark the practical yardstick. AAOIFI's original Governance Standard No. 1 required an independent Shariah supervisory board of at least three members, appointed by shareholders, with no directors of the institution on it, reporting annually to shareholders. AAOIFI's 2024 revision replaced it with a Shariah Governance Framework (GS 1, revised 2024), moved composition into GS 19 and reporting into GS 21, and added GS 23 for Islamic windows, per AAOIFI's list of issued standards. 27four's committee document puts the rule plainly:

The Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions standards advise that a SSB must comprise at least three members. (27four Investment Managers, The 27four Shari'ah Advisory Committee)

Against that yardstick, twelve of the 13 institutions below meet the three-member test on their published roster, and one, HBZ Sirat, relies on a single local advisor backed by a group board abroad. Two further products, the Satrix Shari'ah Top 40 ETF and the EasyEquities Shariah bundles, use index-level or bundle-level screening with no fund board at all. Only Al Baraka Bank shows shareholders appointing the board and approving its pay at an annual general meeting, which is what the AAOIFI model actually asks for.

The banks

Al Baraka Bank: the only shareholder-appointed board

South Africa's only full Islamic bank is also the only institution that runs its Shariah board the way AAOIFI's model describes. Its 2025 annual report lists the Shariah Supervisory Board as Shaykh MS Omar (Chairman), Shaykh YH Khalawi, Mufti Z Bayat and Mufti SA Jakhura, alongside an internal Shariah Department, and records the bank's AAOIFI membership. The notice of the 2026 annual general meeting puts two resolutions to shareholders: Resolution 7 approves the board's 2025 remuneration 'in line with the Shari'ah Governance Framework published by the Central Bank of Bahrain', and Resolution 8 appoints the four scholars to the board. The board's Shariah Report for the year to 31 December 2025 states that it tested the bank's contracts against AAOIFI's Shariah standards and its own resolutions. Our Al Baraka Bank review covers the products the board certifies.

FNB and Absa: one scholar chairs one and sits on the other

FirstRand's Shari'ah Advisory Committee is chaired by Dr Aznan Hasan, a professor of Islamic law at the International Islamic University of Malaysia who, per FNB's committee page, chairs the Shariah Advisory Council of the Securities Commission Malaysia, sits on the UAE Central Bank's Higher Shari'ah Authority and is a member of the AAOIFI Shariah Council. Mufti Zaid Haspatel and Mufti Yusuf Suliman complete the committee, with an internal Shari'ah team reporting to it. FNB's certificate dated 25 June 2026 is signed by all three and lists fifteen products, from transactional accounts and term deposits to property finance, Islamic wills, a family trust, a waqf and FNB Takaful. The committee was reconstituted in 2013 after the previous board resigned during a 2012 governance dispute, as Reuters reported; Dr Hasan and Mufti Haspatel have served since then.

Absa's Shari'ah Supervisory Committee has four members, named on Absa's Islamic banking page: Dr Aznan bin Hasan, Mufti Ashraf Qureishi, Dr Yunoos Osman and Mufti Ahmed Suliman, who certify every product and process under what Absa calls an end-to-end governance framework. What Absa does not do is post a signed, dated certificate PDF, which FNB and Standard Bank both do. Dr Hasan's presence on both committees means the two largest Islamic windows share a chairman-level scholar, useful for consistency and a fair question for independence. Our Absa Islamic Banking provider page records the disclosure gap.

Standard Bank and HBZ: a product-level certificate versus a single advisor

Standard Bank's Shari'ah Advisory Committee is Mufti Zaid Haspatel (Chairman), Qari Mohamad Sauleh Peck and Mufti Yusuf Suliman. It issues a separate signed certificate for each product every January; the 2026 certificate for the Shari'ah Personal Call Account is dated 1 January 2026. HBZ Bank's Sirat window takes a different route. Its About Sirat page names Mufti Muhammed Ismail Haffejee as Shariah Advisor and Moulana Ibraheem Mulla as Shariah Quality and Assurance Officer, and the bank's FAQ says products are 'reviewed, approved, and certified by a Shariah Advisor' based in South Africa. Habib Bank AG Zurich's Sirat profile shows a group Shariah Board chaired by Tan Sri Dr Mohd Daud Bakar. Locally that is one advisor rather than a three-member board, short of the AAOIFI composition rule even though the group layer above it is strong.

The fund managers

Oasis Crescent is the outlier: its board is entirely international. Oasis's certificates, approved at a board meeting in Dubai on 24 February 2025, are signed by Shaykh Nedham Yaqoobi of Bahrain, Shaykh Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo of the United States and Prof Mohd Daud Bakar of Malaysia, and cover each legal entity separately: the management company, the capital arm, the property fund manager, the retirement administrator, the insurer and the UK fund range. That is the most granular certificate publication in the country; the cost is that none of the three is resident in South Africa.

Old Mutual Albaraka's board is the Al Baraka Bank board minus Shaykh Khalawi. Its certificate for the Old Mutual Albaraka Equity Fund, dated 8 April 2026, is unusually informative: the board met four times in the year, audited the investable universe together with the Shariah Audit Department of Albaraka Bank, reviewed an external Shariah compliance audit report and the fund's financial statements, and excluded companies failing either the business screen or the financial ratios; matching certificates exist for the Balanced and Income funds. Camissa and 27four both name three-member boards following AAOIFI screens, but neither posts a signed certificate, so the investor relies on the names rather than a dated opinion. Element's Shari'ah unit trusts page lists four members and posts certificates for each of its three Islamic funds; it also describes Mufti Yusuf Suliman as both its internal head of Shariah and 'Head of Shari'ah for Standard Bank', a dual role worth knowing about. We compared the three largest managers in Oasis vs Old Mutual Albaraka vs Camissa.

The Satrix Shari'ah Top 40 ETF has no scholar board of its own. Under the FTSE/JSE Africa Index Series ground rules, the index holds the Top 40 companies 'that are Shariah compliant' as screened by Yasaar Limited, reviewed quarterly. Yasaar's screen excludes companies earning more than 5% of revenue from conventional finance, alcohol, pork, gambling and entertainment, tobacco or weapons, then requires debt and interest-bearing assets each below 33.333% of total assets, receivables plus cash below 50% and non-compliant income below 5% of revenue. That is a certified methodology, not a certified fund, as we explain in the STXSHA review.

Takaful, wills and medical aid

Bryte Takaful's certificate, issued on 13 August 2025 and hosted on Al Baraka's content server because Albaraka Financial Services distributes the product, approves 'all Takaful products offered by Bryte Takaful' over five signatures, the largest board in the market. Bryte's 2021 policy wording listed Sheikh Tauha Karaan as chairman; the 2025 certificate carries Sheikh Muhammad Carr instead. Tazkiya's board, per its Shariah compliance page, is the same trio that certifies Discovery's medical scheme arrangement, but the latest certificate on its site is dated 6 August 2022, so a current signed opinion is overdue. Discovery's scheme page names the three scholars and promises an annual Shariah audit without publishing one. Our Bryte Takaful provider page and our guide to what scholars certify, cover by cover go deeper.

The overlap map: who sits where

Side by side, the rosters show how concentrated South African Shariah governance is. The table counts only seats on the published boards of the 13 institutions above. Scholars' own biographies list more: Mufti Haspatel's adds Investec Bank, Alexander Forbes and Sentio Capital; Mufti Yusuf Suliman's adds the Bank of Maldives, Takaful Africa and GIC Re-Takaful. We do not count those.

Three patterns follow. First, there are two scholarly circles. A Johannesburg circle trained largely at Darul Uloom Zakariyya (Haspatel, the two Sulimans, Mohamed Ali) certifies Standard Bank, FNB, 27four, Element, Tazkiya and Discovery; a Durban circle around Shaykh Omar, Mufti Bayat and Mufti Jakhura certifies Al Baraka, Old Mutual Albaraka and Camissa; Mufti Ahmed Suliman, Mufti Qureshi and Bryte Takaful bridge the two. Second, the big-bank windows share scholars with each other and with the fund managers, so a dispute over, say, how a Mudarabah pool may smooth profit would be settled by the same people everywhere. Third, independence in the AAOIFI sense is easier to claim with six seats than one, but the capacity to audit six institutions properly is a fair question no South African board answers publicly. The debate over whether a bank window can be compliant at all, examined in Are Islamic banking windows actually halal?, is partly a debate about these names: critics rarely dispute the scholars' credentials, they dispute whether a committee meeting a few times a year can police a window inside a riba-based balance sheet.

Who does not publish a board

• GoTyme Bank: its Shariah savings product is described as certified and reviewed by a committee of Islamic scholars, but no names appear on the product page.
• Sentio Capital Management: its Shariah funds reference a Shariah Supervisory Board applying AAOIFI standards, but the pages we checked do not name the members.
• No Bank Vehicles (NBV): no Shariah board or certification is published.
• Satrix and EasyEquities: screening is at index or bundle level, with no fund-level board.

None of this means the products are non-compliant. It means you cannot check. In a market with no regulator of Shariah governance, an unnamed committee is a request for trust with nothing to anchor it.

A disclosure scorecard

Our view

South Africa's Shariah governance is better than its reputation and worse than its potential. Better, because every bank window and every major fund manager names its scholars, most meet the three-member AAOIFI threshold, and several post dated certificates anyone can read. Worse, because the system rests on roughly ten people, nobody outside Al Baraka's shareholders appoints or removes them, and only two institutions publish anything resembling an audit. A saver can reasonably prefer products with a current, signed certificate: Standard Bank, FNB, Old Mutual Albaraka, Oasis Crescent, Element and Bryte Takaful meet that bar today, and Al Baraka exceeds it with a shareholder-appointed board and an annual Shariah report.

What would move the market forward is modest. Absa, Camissa and 27four could post the certificates their boards presumably already sign. Tazkiya could refresh a certificate that is four years old. Discovery could publish the audit it promises. HBZ could appoint two more local members. Every board could disclose how often it met and what it found, as Old Mutual Albaraka's 8 April 2026 certificate does in a single page. Until the Prudential Authority or the FSCA takes an interest, which neither has signalled, voluntary disclosure is the only governance South African Muslims will get, and the institutions that provide it deserve the business.

Frequently asked questions

Who is on Standard Bank's Shariah board?

Standard Bank's Shari'ah Advisory Committee has three members: Mufti Zaid Haspatel as chairman, Qari Mohamad Sauleh Peck and Mufti Yusuf Suliman. It signs a separate certificate for each Shari'ah product every January; the current certificates are dated 1 January 2026 and are posted on the product pages. Mufti Haspatel and Mufti Yusuf Suliman also sit on FirstRand's committee, which certifies FNB Islamic Banking.

Who is Mufti Zaid Haspatel and which institutions does he advise?

Mufti Zaid Haspatel completed the Aalim and Ifta courses at Darul Uloom Zakariyya, where he still lectures, and specialises in Islamic finance. On published rosters he chairs Standard Bank's Shari'ah Advisory Committee and sits on the FirstRand committee for FNB, the 27four committee, the Tazkiya board and Discovery Health's committee. His own biography at 27four and Tazkiya also lists Investec Bank, Alexander Forbes and Sentio Capital.

Does South Africa have a central Shariah board or regulator for Islamic finance?

No. Unlike Malaysia, Bahrain, Pakistan or the UAE, South Africa has no central Shariah authority, and neither the Prudential Authority nor the Financial Sector Conduct Authority sets rules for Shariah boards. Each institution appoints its own scholars and decides what to publish. The only external benchmark is AAOIFI's governance standards, which call for an independent board of at least three members appointed by shareholders; Al Baraka Bank is the only South African institution whose shareholders vote on the board.

Who certifies FNB Islamic Banking?

The FirstRand Shari'ah Advisory Committee: Dr Aznan Hasan of Malaysia as chairman, Mufti Zaid Haspatel and Mufti Yusuf Suliman. Its certificate dated 25 June 2026 confirms the compliance of fifteen FNB Islamic products, including transactional, call and savings accounts, term deposits, property and vehicle finance, Islamic wills, a family trust, a waqf and FNB Takaful. Dr Hasan also sits on Absa's Shari'ah Supervisory Committee.

Is it a problem that the same scholars sit on several Shariah boards?

It cuts both ways. Shared scholars mean consistent rulings across banks and funds, and a scholar with six seats is less financially dependent on any one of them, which supports independence. The concern is capacity and the absence of any external check: no regulator limits seats, requires rotation or reviews the work. The practical safeguard is to prefer institutions that publish dated certificates and, ideally, audit findings, as Old Mutual Albaraka and Al Baraka do.

Sources

• AAOIFI, five governance standards on Shari'ah governance (GS 1 revised 2024, GS 19 to 22)
• AAOIFI, issued governance standards (GS 19, GS 23)
• Al Baraka Bank, Annual Report 2025
• Al Baraka Bank, Notice of Annual General Meeting 2026 (Resolutions 7 and 8)
• FNB Islamic Banking, Shari'ah Advisory Committee members
• FNB Islamic Banking, Certificate of Shari'ah Compliance (25 June 2026)
• Reuters, S.Africa's FNB hires new sharia committee (30 April 2013)
• Absa, Shari'ah Supervisory Committee members
• Standard Bank, Shari'ah Personal Call Account 2026 Certificate (1 January 2026)
• HBZ Bank, About Sirat
• Habib Bank AG Zurich, Sirat Profile 2025
• Oasis Crescent, Shari'ah certificates (24 February 2025)
• Old Mutual Albaraka Equity Fund, Shari'ah Compliance Certificate (8 April 2026)
• Camissa Asset Management, Shariah Supervisory Board
• 27four Investment Managers, The 27four Shari'ah Advisory Committee
• Element Investment Managers, Shari'ah Unit Trusts
• JSE, FTSE/JSE Africa Index Series Ground Rules v8 (7 October 2024)
• FTSE Russell, Yasaar Global Equity Shariah Index Series methodology
• Bryte Takaful, Certificate of Shari'ah Compliance (13 August 2025)
• Bryte Insurance, Takaful BnB Sure Agreement Document (2021)
• Tazkiya, Shari'ah compliance page
• Tazkiya, Certificate of Shari'ah Compliance (6 August 2022)
• Discovery Health Medical Scheme, Shariah Compliant Arrangement