Monem Salam:
As-salamu alaykum. Monem Salam here. Before we get started with the episode, I wanted to let our listeners know about October being Islamic Financial Literacy Month. Saturna Capital is hosting for free webinars on Islamic finance and investing, which you can watch live or on replay just in case you missed it or you want to watch it again, there'll be all available. You can watch them on Saturna.com forward slash IFLM. That's saturna.com/iflm. And you can find out a lot more information about it. All right, let's get started.

Welcome to Halal Money Matters sponsored by Saturna Capital. I'm Monem Salam. And on today's episode, or let's call it a mini episode, we have no stranger to Halal Money Matters. It's none other than Owaiz Dadabhoy who is a senior vice president for Saturna Capital. And he's been on the shows before talking about endowments and non-profits and those types of things. So today's a little bit of a different topic, but similarly related to. Welcome, Owaiz to the show. As-salamu alaykum.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Yeah, I'm really excited about being here. Wa alaikum assalam.

Monem Salam:
Yeah. This is a like I mentioned earlier, kind of a mini episode. We wanted to kind of just talk a little bit about something that, that that was kind of came into existence a couple of years ago called Islamic Financial Literacy Month. So why don't you start off and maybe just tell us a little bit about it?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Sure. It's actually started three years ago. This is the 3rd October that we will be doing this. It came from an idea that we were having in one of our weekly meetings and in April of 2024, which is, you know, the year that we got started with this, there was financial literacy month just in general in America. It was established back in 2004, I believe, by the U.S. Senate. So one of the participants on our called Hud, he actually mentioned, wouldn't it be nice one day if we had like an Islamic type of thing like this? And we didn't have we didn't have this name at the time we created more Islamic Financial Literacy Month over the months after that. And so we just decided, why don't we just do it? We all like the idea. And we said, as long as we get started, then people will join us later. And that's how we got started.

Monem Salam:
So is the Financial Literacy month also the same month of October as well?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
No, we well, no, that's in April. That's April of every year.
And we actually thought about that. We said why don't we just make it the same month. And then we said, well, it might get mixed in too much, let's just have our own. And we decided to do it later in the year. That's great.

Monem Salam:
Now, have you have you had other people joining in other institutions? And husband has been the feedback?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
We've talked to other finance companies and investment companies and some of them we've made joint presentations with them. Some of them have talked about it, and we're going to have some, joint presentations in October. And one of the finance companies will be joining us in that as well.

Monem Salam:
Yeah. So I mean, I think just kind of emphasize, although we as the capital, we started it. This was by no means something that we wanted to kind of keep to ourselves. This was something that we wanted to try to spread the message out and tell as many people as possible and get as many institutions as possible to be able to, you know, get involved with Financial Literacy Month. So that being said, why is that important? Why do you think Islamic financial literacy is important to the community?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Well, what we've seen over the years, you you're no stranger to the business of Islamic finance. You started in 2003 at Saturna, and then I joined you. You actually hired me in 2008. Five years later, I thought that gap was bigger. But it's not. It's only five years. So, so, you know, when I joined, what I realized pretty quickly is that the number of people that understand Islamic finance and investing in our Muslim community throughout the country, because both of both of us have traveled everywhere. And it's a small percentage, but it's not just about Islamic finance and Islamic investing. It's also just finance and investing in general. And this is not also just the Muslim community. It's pervasive throughout the country. People are just not informed. You'll hear doctors tell us, you know, I know this part very well. I just don't know investments very well. And so you're going to have to help me on that. And so we thought, you know, doing something like Islamic Financial Literacy Month would help to make a huge push, not only from us, but other companies to make a huge push in education during that month.

Monem Salam:
Yeah. I mean, that's really what it's about, right? The more people get educated, the more they can they can learn about the products. And really from our perspective, it's more about also, you know, really aligning their finances with their faith. And a lot of people just either, you know, don't have the time for it or those type of things, this is just one month. I mean, you really should be doing it every day, right? But this is just one month where all of us can focus on it and, and really have an opportunity for eventually to have different mosques and other institutions kind of jump on board as well and maybe do their own kind of, literacy programs as well.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Yeah, exactly. Part of what we have to do is educate. I think part of it is motivate and inspire and get people started, because what we find 25, 30, even 40 years later, because we started, you know, the Amana funds were started back in 1986 was the 40th year anniversary this year. What we're seeing is that people come back to us later and they say, you help me to get my children educated, or you help me to have the kind of retirement that I wanted to have. I couldn't dream of it. And here I am. I'm able to have a proper retirement. So we want more people to be able to jump onto that early, because even a one year lost is going to be a huge loss down the road. If you have a ten, 20, 30, 40 year timeline.

Monem Salam:
That's really good. So, when you think about it now, you've kind of done it over the past two years. But really, financial is something you've been focusing on for a very long time. What would you say or would be like the top three, myths that you would want to, you know, eradicate or get rid of in the community when it comes to Islamic finance?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Well, on the finance side, let's, let's split out finance and investing. So sure, let's do investing on. That's better. Let's do that because the finance one is pretty easy. You know, people think that Islamic, financial services are the same as regular financial services and that they're just calling it a different thing. But, you know, I think people really need to take a look at it. Scholars have opined on it. On the investing side, you know, I think people think that it's something that's very complicated and really, it's not, it's not too difficult. It's just you need professional people to look at the portfolio and to buy the right companies. But in essence, it's taking out those things that you don't want to invest in. Right. And then so for example, we don't like to eat pork. That's most of them or drink alcohol. So we take companies out like that. And then we also don't like to have high debt or, you know, interest income. So we have to look at those strictures as well. And that's all laid out. It's just, you know, most people just don't know about it. But it is it is something that is very easy for us to do. And I think people can jump into this and really do well for themselves if they give it a chance and learn about it.

Monem Salam:
Yeah. And so that's, that's the specific part of Islamic investing as well. And you know, now there's a lot of apps available. You go to websites and you can look at exactly what you want to do. But then also it's a matter of like knowing what type of accounts you want to open up for the most bang for your buck. If you want to call it like one of the most tax efficient, those type of things. But then also once you have these accounts, you know, what do you actually invest in? Because for me, I would say one of the one of the another like big, big, big kind of misunderstanding is somebody, somebody asked me the question is an IRA halal. Well all right investment in individual retirement account. Well it's the count is just an account. It's just a shell. Once you put the money in and you invest it, then you can choose whether to make it or not.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Right. I've heard that so many times on for one case, for example, people will say, well, I don't put money into my 401(k) because it's haram. And it's like what you said, if you can find an option that is not if you can find a brokerage account at your 401(k) your from your employer and then invest in company like or a mutual fund like Amana Funds. Then you just made it, you know, into something that's not wrong.

Monem Salam:
So I know other companies are going to be doing different things when it comes to Islamic financial literacy, what are some things you're going to focus on at Saturna Capital and the rest of the community.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
So the first two years we had webinars and we offer this to all of our existing clients. We pushed that out on email and, you know, hopefully get a lot of people to join in. We've had some success with that. And that's going to be the primary thing we have this particular month is we're going to have four different, webinars.
So one's going to be on education, one's going to be on retirement, another one is going to be about once you get married, what should you do after that? Right. Your early stages of marriage and how you can save. So we're and another one on institutions. Right. So how do you save for financial institutions future with endowments and receiving donated stock and that sort of thing. So we'll have those four. And we have regional managers that are in every quadrant of the United States. Right. So northeast, Midwest, the West, etc. and each of them will be making presentations either on zoom or in person to and in conferences. So we're just making it a bigger focus than normal. And the other thing that we would love to do is speak at MSAs, because the young people also tell us that they do not have this kind, of course, in high school or college, which again, just on finances and investments in particular, not in the Islamic side. Forget that part. Just and saving for the future. They don't hear about it or budgeting and so forth.

Monem Salam:
And so the material that's been now we're kind of building a library, right? This is the third year we're doing it. We did last year the what are some unique things that we did in the last couple of years that you actually enjoy doing and are still available for people to, to, to review?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Yes. So on. I think it's still on our website, but we have webinars from the last couple of years, but even other webinars as well. But one in particular that was different was we were speaking to financial advisors, financial advisors that are talking to the Muslim community. They might be at Fidelity or Schwab. And, you know, they already have existing relationships with Muslims. So we talked to them about what Islamic Financial Literacy Month is, and we told them what, you know, what they might want to do with their clients to introduce this if they already don't know about it.

Monem Salam:
of my favorites was the one we did about the, a reading of one hadith per day for the entire month. Oh yeah. That was, that was really great. So and you know, I think you know, those are all available I think on, on YouTube, on our channel mutual funds. So definitely people get can check those out as well. Great. So any last comments that you might have about this month and what, what other people can do to be able to promote it themselves?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Yeah, I think what people can do is if you're already an investor and you say, I already know this stuff, right? I get that a lot from older people in our community. You know, if you benefited from this, tell your children, your grandchildren, your nephews and nieces as well. Have them plug into something like this. It, if someone gets started, is going to be so meaningful down the road. I remember I tell the story all the time that my boss, when I first got started at the company I was working at, she forced me to start my retirement account at 19 years of age, and if she hadn't done that, I don't know that it would have grown to this level. And you could be the impetus for that as well. So tell a friend, tell a relative, let them know that this is going on. And like Monem said, you know, what you could also do is if you're a leader in your community, schedule something. We're happy to do it. There might be some other companies, finance companies that would like to do it as well, or we can pair up together.

Monem Salam:
So, you know, as you know, I know you're thinking about this is pretty big, but I don't want you to retire yet. I mean, we have plenty more years left for you to be able to kind of educate the community. There's a lot more going on. But one of the things you mentioned, which is important is that, you know, I remember one of our one of our regional reps actually did a, a, a seminar for an entire family. And I'm talking about generationally, we call it in order. You call it a canon. And so he did it for like I think there was probably like 50, 60 people from like grandparents, parents, children, you know, all the way down in different people, all of the age that they could make some investments and they actually did that. So that's another option people have is like not only talk to your family, but really talk to your generational family on that, as I was mentioning, to be able to do that too, and would be happy to help kind of coordinate that come in as speakers and those type of things also.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
That's right. There's a lot to talk about with the family. And, you know, there's this thing called intergenerational wealth. There's transfers of money that happen. And, you know, we're trying to do it in a halal fashion our whole life, and then we distribute it, and we haven't taught any of our beneficiaries what to do with it. This is a good time to do that.

Monem Salam:
That's great. That's great. I'm really looking forward to it. I know it's coming up in October. Where can people go to get more information about what's coming up and for the entire month, and also how they can access this information?

Owaiz Dadabhoy:
Saturna.com/iflm is the website. That's the link that they can go to.
You'll find lots of information there and we'll have the schedule of events. We're adding more presentations that we've already scheduled. We're going to be adding those to the website as well. But start with the four webinars. You can go on there and click on the reservation list, and you'll be able to join us on that.

Monem Salam:
And like you said, the trade organization that we have was called the Islamic Finance Trade Association of America. They're going to be doing some promotion. They're going to be doing some maybe some, some, some key seminars, webinars as well. And there's other institutions as well that are out there. If you if you're already working with somebody else, they'll be kind of getting involved also. So I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks for your time. Thank you for listening to Halal Money matters. If you like what you hear, please do rate us on the app stores and also leave us a review and helps other people find us a lot easier.
 

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