Why is Wahed Invest Still Funding Genocide?

This article arrives far too late and offers far too little. Yet, the battle against Zionism will continue to rage on, and part of this struggle is to sever every vile tentacle sustaining this barbaric and insidious pseudo-state until it finally crumbles into oblivion. Continuing to hold stocks like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta after knowing their roles in abetting the genocide in Gaza is wholly and fundamentally impermissible.

The genocidal erasure of Gaza has drawn outrage across the Muslim world. Muslims have gone to lengths boycotting companies aiding or abetting Israel’s onslaught, whether by saying goodbye to Happy Meals or buying their morning brew from other than Starbucks.

Yet, unbeknownst to many Muslim investors, one of the leading ‘Shariah-compliant’ investment platforms – ‘Wahed Invest’ – has been massively profiting from some of those very companies implicated in the genocide.

Wahed boasts a more than half a billion dollar portfolio, and some half a million investors worldwide, branding itself as “the world’s leading Shariah-compliant investment manager” and has been promoted by some of the world’s leading Muslim influencers.¹

While it has done well screening companies for certain prohibited dealings and offering its customer base with alternative gold and property portfolios, it continues to hold enormous stakes in Big Tech corporations like Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and Meta (Facebook’s parent), even as these firms wage war on Palestinians systematically silence their voices.

Wahed’s ‘Halal’ Funds Invest in Genocide Complicit Tech Giants

Wahed Invest markets its portfolios as Shariah-compliant by avoiding industries like alcohol or gambling. It also screens for usury, though the permissibility of its usury metrics remain the subject of debate among Muslims.

In all cases, Wahed’s flagship equity funds remain heavily invested in U.S. tech giants – the same companies that are abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As of early 2025, Wahed’s portfolios held roughly $70 million in Microsoft stock and nearly $43 million in Alphabet (Google) shares, alongside about $32 million in Meta Platforms (Facebook and Instagram). These were among Wahed’s top holdings, making up a significant portion of its ‘Halal‘ equity investments.²

Even after the decimation of Gaza erupted post October 2023, Wahed has neither divested, rebalanced or even publicly addressed its investor base about this, many of whom remain in the dark about where there money has ended up. The following sections detail how Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have been complicit in Israel’s genocide – and thus how Wahed’s investments, however inadvertently, made its users part-owners of the killing of their siblings in Gaza.

Cloud and AI

Various nvestigations have exposed how Israel’s military tapped U.S. tech giants for cloud computing, data handling, and artificial intelligence during the war on Gaza. In fact, the Israeli army openly acknowledged using cloud storage and AI services from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to enable its bombing. Col. Racheli Dembinsky, head of the IDF’s Computing and Information Systems unit, confirmed in July 2024 that the army was leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure as it ramped up its assault on Gaza. She praised the “crazy wealth of services, big data and AI” these companies provide, which gave the military “very significant operational effectiveness” in its Gaza campaign.³

A January 2025 Guardian investigation based on leaked documents revealed that the Israeli military’s reliance on Microsoft’s Azure cloud and AI technology surged during the heaviest bombing of Gaza. After the 7th of October 2023, Microsoft struck at least $10 million in new contracts to supply the IDF with expanded cloud computing capacity and technical support. Microsoft scurried to meet an Israeli “rush in demand for storage and computing power” as it intensified its destruction.⁴ Intelligence reports suggest the IDF allowed for the massacre of up to 20 civilians per low ranking Gazan fighter.⁵

The BDS movement has singled out Microsoft for its complicity, calling it “perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.”⁶ Many Microsoft employees have lost or risked their jobs in protest. In April 2025, a Muslim engineer interrupted a Microsoft corporate event, crying out, “Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military… Microsoft powers this genocide in our region… Stop using AI for genocide. You have blood on your hands.”⁷

Amazon and Google have also abetted genocide. Both companies signed a $1.2 billion contract (Project Nimbus) to provide cloud services to the Israeli government, including the military, back in 2021. The same infrastructure was active during the genocide on Gaza. A joint investigation by +972 Magazine and others revealed that the Israeli army stores massive surveillance data on Palestinians in Gaza using Amazon’s AWS cloud, taking advantage of AWS’s “endless storage” capacity.⁸

The same investigation found that Google’s AI tools were supplied to Israeli military units after October 2023, boosting the IDF’s ability to process big data on targets and resistance fighters. Israeli officers described making “orders from Amazon” – as if ordering a pair of headphones – for cloud-based intelligence on Gaza during operations . Amazon’s and Google’s cloud platforms have become the digital backbone of Israel’s war machine, allowing the occupation to scale up surveillance, targeting, and coordination of attacks.⁹

Meta’s Censorship of Palestinian Voices

Beyond the battlefield, Big Tech has also helped Israel’s campaign by controlling the narrative and silencing Palestinians online. The prime culprit here is Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram – another top holding across Shariah-compliant funds like Wahed’s.

Meta has systematically suppressed Palestinian content and pro-Palestine voices on its platforms, under the guise of content moderation. Human Rights Watch documented that between October and November 2023, at least 1,050 pieces of content about Palestine were taken down or obscured on Facebook and Instagram – and 1,049 of those were posts by Palestinians or their supporters (only one deletion was of content supportive of Israel). The silencing ranged from arbitrary removal of posts and accounts, to down-ranking Palestinian news so fewer people saw it.¹⁰

BBC News, itself a mouthpiece for Israel found that Facebook “severely restricted” the reach of Palestinian news agencies’ pages during the war, causing their engagement to plummet after October 2023. Leaked internal documents showed that Instagram (also owned by Meta) increased its moderation of Palestinian comments and content at Israel’s behest in this period.¹¹

Effectively, while Israeli bombs were flattening Gaza, Meta’s algorithms were erasing Palestinian stories and pleas from global view. Yet Wahed’s portfolios continued to hold millions in Meta stock, profiting from Facebook and Instagram even as those platforms silenced the oppressed.

Shariah Compliance

Defenders of Wahed (and similar Islamic funds) might argue that ‘Shariah-compliance’ funds cannot screen out companies for ‘political reasons’ like support for Israel as if ‘genocide’ is a political matter or that Islam is some secular, ritualistic doctrine, separated from the world. They would note that standard Shariah investment criteria focus on a company’s business activity (no alcohol, no pork, no interest-based banking, and so on) and financial ratios, not its complicity in genocide.

This response reflects a thin and wholly flawed understanding of the Islamic Shariah – an excuse worse than a sin. Shariah is not confined to avoiding pork and Riba (usury) but fundamentally about truth and justice. It is wholly unacceptable that Wahed continues to brandish the Shariah compliance banner while investing in companies actively enabling the massacre of Muslims. Can a portfolio fundamentally comprised of investments in Microsoft, Google, Procter and Gamble and Coca Cola claim it is ‘compliant’ with the religion of truth and justice?

As one Shariah advisory expert admits, traditional screens “do not always reflect the moral, social, or political activities” of companies, calling to go beyond peripheral checkboxes by incorporating “ethical red lines” for companies complicit in genocide and oppression.¹² In truth, it is largely a choice (or intentional oversight) by investment managers and Shariah boards. Until then, these portfolios are wholly and substantially impermissible, let alone ‘compliant’ with the objectives of the Shariah.

“And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression.” (Quran 5:2).

And in another verse,

“O believers! Stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or close relatives.” (Quran 4:135).

And the Prophet ﷺ warned against even indirectly supporting injustice, instructing:

“Help your brother, whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed,”¹³ explaining that helping an oppressor means stopping him from committing injustice. Imagine then, what can be said about financially rewarding Israel’s genocide on Gaza – the era’s most harrowing display of barbarity and injustice.

A Call for Immediate Action

The most valid criticism of this article is that it arrives far too late and offers far too little. Yet, the battle against Zionism will continue to rage on, and part of this struggle is to sever every vile tentacle sustaining this barbaric and insidious pseudo-state until it finally crumbles into oblivion. Continuing to hold stocks like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta after knowing their roles in abetting the genocide in Gaza is wholly and fundamentally impermissible.

The fact that these holdings occur under the banner of ‘Islamic investing’ is just another travesty of our times. Muslim investors trusted Wahed Invest but Wahed failed that mission by clinging to irrelevant criteria and ignoring the broader aims of the Shariah. If Wahed fails to promptly purge genocide-linked companies from its portfolios, it will be up to Muslim investors to vote with their feet (and wallets).

Muslims must divest from Wahed’s funds and tell them their reasons for doing so. Wahed and similar providers will only fix up if they perceive that their clients will not accept investments associated with Muslim blood. At the same time, Muslims must advocate for and establish genuinely Shariah-compliant alternatives—investments in companies that are wholly and substantially pure. Even more commendable is the investment in the hereafter. Is it not sufficient that we stand before our Lord having abandoned Gaza?

References:

1. Wahed Invest. (n.d.). You’re right to download Wahed. ↩︎
2. Fintel. (n.d.). Wahed Invest LLC 13F filings and top holdings. ↩︎
3. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. (2024, January). Amazon, Google & Microsoft fuel Israeli military aggression in Israel’s war on Gaza – Investigation reveals. ↩︎
4. Ibid ↩︎
5. Lee, Lloyd. “Early on in the war, IDF gave clearance to allow 20 civilian deaths for every low-ranking Hamas suspect, intelligence sources said: report.” Business Insider, 4 Apr. 2024. ↩︎
6. Mondoweiss. (2025, May). Meet the fired Microsoft employees challenging the company’s complicity in the Gaza genocide. ↩︎
7. Ibid ↩︎
8. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. (2024, January). Amazon, Google & Microsoft fuel Israeli military aggression in Israel’s war on Gaza – Investigation reveals. ↩︎
9. Ibid ↩︎
10. Human Rights Watch. (2023, December 21). Meta’s broken promises: Systemic censorship of Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook.  ↩︎
11. BBC News. (2024, May). The medics who never returned from Gaza. ↩︎
12. Al-Nabhany, A. A. (2023). Beyond qualitative and quantitative: Shariah screening in light of moral accountability. LinkedIn. ↩︎
13. Bukhari on the authority of Anas b. Malik rady Allahu ‘anh. ↩︎