Both standards screen the same issuers from the same filings. They reach a different verdict on 4,108 of the 15,569 companies each of them can decide.
| Usmani | S&P Shariah | |
|---|---|---|
| Debt ceiling | 33.0% | 33.0% |
| Measured against | total assets | 36-month average market cap |
| Issuers passing | 7,687 | 5,897 |
| Could not establish | 10,009 | 14,646 |
Both use a 33.0% ceiling, so the ceiling explains none of it. The difference is entirely the denominator — total assets against 36-month average market cap — which is the lever that moves far more verdicts.
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.
YZOFF · PFE · CGC · IART · NOV · DVN · PPIH · EML · VSH · KDP · PENG · SWK
OONEF · YMT · ILAG · ADDHY · FTAI · FRRDF · REFR · NMTC · TAYD · ZTS · NXL · ACFN
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.