Both standards screen the same issuers from the same filings. They reach a different verdict on 4,432 of the 15,724 companies each of them can decide.
| MSCI Islamic M-Series | FTSE Shariah | |
|---|---|---|
| Debt ceiling | 33.33% | 33.33% |
| Measured against | 36-month average market cap | total assets |
| Issuers passing | 5,168 | 8,037 |
| Could not establish | 14,504 | 10,104 |
These differ on both levers: the ceiling (33.33% against 33.33%) and, more importantly, the denominator (36-month average market cap against total assets).
A company whose market capitalisation halves has a debt ratio that doubles under a market-cap standard and does not move at all under an asset-based one — nothing about the business changed, but the verdict did. How often each lever is the one that splits a pair is measured across every pair here.
Real issuers from HTR's corpus. Open any of them for the ratio each verdict rests on — which is the thing that makes a disagreement checkable rather than merely stated.
OONEF · YMT · ILAG · ADDHY · FTAI · REFR · NMTC · TAYD · ZTS · NXL · MU · ACFN
YZOFF · PFE · PREM · ACB · CGC · IART · NOV · DVN · PPIH · EML · SEG · VSH
HTR does not have a view on which of these two standards you should follow. They are both published, both applied by real index providers, and both defensible — they simply define the question differently. Which definition applies to you is a matter for your own scholarship.
What HTR can do is compute both honestly, show you where they part company, and never hide the split behind a single blended score.