Darul Ifta New Zealand Review - Halal Finance Products

Darul Ifta New Zealand is the fatwa department of Darul Uloom Arabia Islamia NZ and a faculty of the Auckland Islamic Trust, run by Mufti Muhammad Irshad Motara with assisting Ulama. It has answered community questions for roughly a decade across email and WhatsApp before formalising the website, runs a two-year Ifta training course, and publishes practical templates alongside rulings: the will, a partnership contract, a loan contract and marriage documents. It is a non-profit and everything is free.

The will template is structurally sound Islamic drafting adapted to a common law jurisdiction. It sequences funeral expenses, debts, wasiyyah and faraid residue in the correct order; it caps the wasiyyah at one third of the net estate and, importantly, includes an automatic proportionate reduction clause if bequests exceed the cap rather than leaving the excess to fail messily; it prohibits nothing it should not, since bequests to non-heirs and charities are exactly what the one-third margin is for; and it directs executors to determine heirs' shares with a qualified Alim or Mufti at death, which is the correct treatment given shares depend on who survives. A trust clause keeps a minor's inheritance with the administrators until majority.

What the template cannot do is bend New Zealand succession law. Execution must satisfy the Wills Act 2007 (testator plus two witnesses present at the same time), otherwise the will is invalid and the Administration Act's intestacy rules take over, which bear no resemblance to faraid. Even a valid will is subject to Family Protection Act 1955 claims by close family and to relationship property elections by a surviving spouse or partner, either of which can override the faraid distribution. None of this is a criticism of the template; it is the reason the sensible workflow is template first, lawyer second.