Asalamu Walikum,
I’m reaching out and I need advice on handling unrealized gains from NVDA. I know that financially NVDA is sharia compliant but Im having doubts about holding the stock as it is involved with Israel.
If I were to sell, would I have to give all my unrealized gains away to charity or do I purify based on the normal procedure?
Thanks
You need to put your reservations into perspective. What exactly does Nvidia sell to Israel? Computer chips, specifically GPUs. What can you do with a GPU? Many things, from playing video games, to rendering CGI, to AI, Mining Crypto, running a Datacenter, I think that covers the major use cases.
So what from that list is haram? Nothing. You can create a datacenter to track poor people and get aid to them faster and easier. You can use a datacenter to track political enemies and lock them up. Nvidia itself is not selling a finished product that can be used for harm or for benefit. They are selling a raw material.
If a business sells kitchen knives, it is not their fault or responsibility that someone buys the knives to kill people. If a business sells food, it is not their fault or their responsibility if someone over eats and becomes fat and dies. It is not their fault or their responsibility if someone uses their food to make their body attractive so they can work in prostitution.
The other unique thing about Nvidia is they are effectively the only option on earth for all the use cases I listed above.
Other things to consider; how is you selling NVDA going to hurt Israel, or help Gaza? Odds are it doesn’t help or hurt them either way. What about holding NVDA and let’s say it increases 10x from where you are. Would that increase in wealth Help Israel? probably not. Would an increase in your wealth help, or hurt Gaza? Hopefully it would help, but whether it does is based on your actions, not the company’s action.
If you live in the west as a citizen of a country there, and you want to help Gaza, the most effective thing you can do, is pick up your phone, get the phone numbers of your elected officials and call them regularly to stop their support of Israel, and convince the people you know to do the same. If enough people did that, you would see governments move quickly. Enough people is probably in the hundreds of thousands, you wouldn’t even need a million people.
I’ve decided to pull out of NVDA as their relationship with Israel is something that cannot be ignored. I am not referring to just simply selling a product to a customer because if that were the case then I don’t think I would see an issue with that.
In regards of handling capital gains, I plan on taking two steps to purify:
Note on Geographical Purification:
This purification is not required, however I personally want to avoid any revenue generated from Israel. I looked at the 10k report and calculated how much of the ‘other’ category contributed to the overall revenue based on geography. It’s not perfect, but it’s something I guess.
In terms of donation, I plan on doing a stock donation to PCRF as that helps to prevent a taxable event while allowing to purify my capital gains.
Thats it folks.
May Allah, the Most Merciful and the Sovereign, forgive me for any shortcomings.
Ghalib
Sources:
The 10k report for NVDA for the fiscal year ended January 26, 2025
