A colophon is the back-of-book page where, in the manuscript tradition, the scribe identified the work: who copied it, where, when, with what tools, from what exemplar. This is the digital equivalent — an explicit account of how this notebook was made, what choices were deliberate, and what its limits are.
Who made this
This site is currently maintained by a single operator — an Australian Muslim with a background in software engineering and a personal stake in living riba-free with his family. He is not a credentialled ʿālim. The site does not issue rulings; it synthesises and cites the work of scholars who do.
The operator's identity is not yet published openly here. Three reasons: (1) the family has not yet decided whether public attribution is wise given the contested nature of some content, (2) the work should stand or fall on its own merit rather than its operator's reputation, (3) the move toward a public byline is planned once 1–2 scholar advisors join. For practical purposes — corrections, partnerships, story submissions, or any question — email support@ribafreejourney.com; responses are personal.
What the operator IS: a serious student of contemporary Islamic finance scholarship, a careful reader of AAOIFI Shariah Standards, and a layperson who has spent years sitting with these questions in his own household. What the operator is NOT: a mufti, a Shariah board member, a credentialled scholar, or someone qualified to issue fatwa. The corpus on this site does that work; the operator only organises and cross-links it.
Typography
The body text is set in Fraunces for display headings — a high-contrast serif designed by Phaedra Charles and Flavia Zimbron, with the dramatic Didone-style curves that read clearly at large sizes. Body running text uses Geist Sans, a contemporary humanist sans-serif released by Vercel. The numeric and code passages use Geist Mono, with tabular figures enabled for the Hijri / Qurʾān verse references like 2:275.
The Arabic body text uses Amiri, a contemporary digital naskh designed by Khaled Hosny on the Bulaq foundry tradition. Arabic display lines (the Bismillah on the home page hero) use Reem Kufi, a contemporary kufic designed by Khaled Hosny — chosen for its legibility at large sizes and structural restraint.
The line measure is set close to 70 characters; this is the readable middle ground between the scholarly 60-character measure of academic typography and the wider 80-character measure of modern reading sites. Anything beyond 80 reads as friction; anything below 55 reads as cramped.
Palette
Two themes — light and dark — sharing a single accent palette:
- Emerald (
#0f4c3a) as the primary accent: chosen for its association with the Islamic visual tradition and its readability against both warm parchment and midnight olive backgrounds. - Gold (
#a8842b) as the secondary: used sparingly for ornaments, dates, and one-off emphasis. Warm enough to coexist with the emerald without competing. - Parchment (
#f7f1e3) light background, midnight olive (#0c100e) dark — both warm-toned, neither pure white nor pure black, to reduce eye strain across long reading sessions. - Oxblood (
#7A1F2B) signature accent reserved for ḥarām verdicts and warning callouts — used so seldom that when it appears, it carries weight.
Methodology
The site's content is organized in nine sections, written under five disciplines:
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The Why — exegetical and jurisprudential. Reads the Qurʾān 2:275–281 sequence, surveys the four Sunnī madhabs' positions on modern bank interest, presents the ḥikmah (divine wisdom) arguments, and refutes the necessity argument against its own classical conditions.
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Consensus — quantitative. Surveys 59 named scholars and collective bodies on six core questions. Generates percentage breakdowns. Every position is sourced to a specific publication or fatwā number.
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Structures — technical. Three Islamic contract types (Murābaḥah, Ijārah, Mushārakah) with cashflow diagrams, structural-property comparison against the conventional mortgage, and country-by-country implementation map.
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Trade & Barakah — exhortational. The scriptural foundation for entrepreneurship, the Prophet's ﷺ commercial timeline, the Companions' wealth.
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Audit — empirical. Providers across four markets (Australia, the US, UK, and Canada) graded against the Six Pillars of Real Compliance, with named-scholar consultation and, where public, a document-grounded read of how each contract actually works.
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Playbook — practical. Three capital tiers, the housing chapter, the entrepreneur patterns drawn from documented US/UK exemplars.
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Invest — pedagogical. Halal investment instruments, platforms, calculator with bull/base/bear scenarios.
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Obligations — completionist. Zakāt, mawārīth, halal income audit.
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Hijrah — exitential. Five destinations with visas, costs, trade-offs.
What this notebook is NOT
In honest terms:
- Not a fatwā. No ruling here carries the authority of a qualified muftī giving you a personal ruling. The work is research synthesis, not religious opinion.
- Not licensed financial advice. The operator holds no AFSL. Nothing here substitutes for a qualified financial advisor.
- Not exhaustive. Each market's Islamic finance scene has more providers than those audited; the consensus dataset surveys 59 scholars but not every voice; the corpus has more than the entries indexed. The work is ongoing.
- Not infallible. Errors exist. Spotting one is a contribution; please email.
What this notebook IS
- A first-pass single-source reference for any Western Muslim — across Australia, the US, the UK and Canada — trying to navigate riba-free life with rigor.
- A documented entry point into the deeper scholarly literature.
- An evolving resource — updated as scholars publish, providers change contracts, and the audience submits gaps.
- Free, ad-free, affiliate-free, and donor-optional. See How we're funded.
The technical layer
Built on Next.js 16 with the App Router, deployed on Vercel. Content is authored in MDX (Markdown extended with JSX components). The geometric backgrounds are pure SVG with CSS animations — no Three.js, no WebGL, sub-1% CPU. The retrieval AI at /ask uses keyword scoring over a typed JSON corpus, with optional Claude (Anthropic) synthesis grounded to retrieved citations.
The codebase is intended to be open-sourced once the launch settles. The US, UK and Canada editions already run on the same framework as the Australian one; a reader who wants to add a new market should be able to fork the structure and swap in local providers, the tax envelope, and scholarly voices.
Acknowledgements
The intellectual ancestors of this work, named explicitly:
- Mufti Muḥammad Taqī ʿUsmānī — whose Introduction to Islamic Finance (1998) and Historic Judgment on Interest (1999) are the books this notebook stands on.
- Joe Bradford — whose blunt writing on Western Islamic finance is the closest English-language tradition this notebook attempts to extend.
- Nouman Ali Khan — whose tafsīr of al-Baqarah 2:275–281 reshaped my understanding of the verses.
- The AMJA fiqh committee — whose standing resolutions are the load-bearing wall of the Western Muslim fatwā tradition.
- Islamic Finance Guru (UK) — whose 8-year experiment proved that a single Muslim finance content brand can compound to a quarter-million subscribers. The aspirational benchmark.
And the patient family who lived with this getting built.