Amana Funds Review

The Amana Income Fund began operations on June 23, 1986 - making Amana the oldest and largest family of Islamic-principles funds in the US (company-claimed, and no competitor disputes it). The origin story has two published versions: Saturna's current page says Dr. M. Yaqub Mirza approached fund manager Nick Kaiser in 1986, while an older article on the same site says the North American Islamic Trust approached Kaiser in 1984; the launch date is consistent across both. Kaiser founded Saturna Capital in Bellingham, Washington in 1989 as the funds' adviser; the firm remains 100% family- and employee-owned, manages roughly $11 billion (as of May 31, 2026, company-reported), and is now led by president Jane Carten. Both founders passed away within months of each other.

The lineup covers the full allocation spectrum. Amana Growth (AMAGX/AMIGX, 1994) is the star: $6.5B in assets and a 17.6%-17.9% ten-year annualized return that beats the S&P 500's 15.5%, from a concentrated ~31-stock book led by Taiwan Semiconductor, ASML, Apple, and NVIDIA - technology is 53.6% of the fund. Amana Income (AMANX/AMINX, 1986) holds $2.36B in dividend payers (TSM 14%, Eli Lilly 10.4%, Rockwell) and delivers 12.2%-12.5% over ten years, trailing the index but with a value-income mandate. Amana Developing World ($194M, 2009) gives Sharia-screened emerging-markets exposure, and Amana Participation ($322M, 2015) is the first non-equity halal income fund in the US - about 90 sukuk from GCC sovereigns and corporates, monthly distributions, a 2-5 year average maturity, and a 2.9%-3.2% SEC yield.

Screening is systematic: proprietary software grades over 5,000 global stocks monthly, excluding companies with more than 5% of revenue from prohibited sources (alcohol, gambling, pork, adult media, conventional interest-based finance, with tobacco advised against), more than 33% total debt to market capitalization, or more than 45% receivables to total assets. Roughly 2,150 stocks pass, and fundamental analysis distills a 325-security recommended list. Notably, the funds hold no interest-paying instruments at all - cash is deployed through murabaha and wakala structures, partly via a wholly-owned Cayman subsidiary disclosed in the prospectus. One inconsistency worth knowing: the prohibited-industry list differs across Saturna's own pages (fund prospectuses add insurance; the fund-family page adds firearms and weapons; a diagram adds fossil-fuel extraction), so the operative screen is the prospectus language.

Sharia governance evolved quietly: the funds historically followed Fiqh Council of North America guidelines, but current certification is quarterly review by Amanie Advisors Sdn Bhd - a globally recognized Malaysia-based Sharia advisory - with per-fund Islamic certification documents published. FCNA's role survives in the zakat methodology: Saturna applies FCNA's 2.5% asset-based approach, publishes fund-level zakatable-asset ratios (about 20% for Income, 12% for Growth, 31% for Developing World, and 100% for Participation as of year-end 2025), and will send investors an annual zakat estimate report for their Saturna accounts. Purification is equally operationalized: per-share factors from audited annuals (for fiscal 2025, about $0.0112 for AMANX and $0.0063 for AMAGX - roughly $11 per 1,000 shares) are published each August, with Participation exempt because its sukuk income is third-party-certified halal.

The June 24, 2026 launch of three Amana ETFs on Nasdaq is the family's biggest structural change in a decade: AMGR (Growth strategy, 0.61%), AMEM (Developing World, 0.91%), and AMEI (Equity Income, 0.76%) mirror the mutual fund portfolios with the same managers at institutional-class pricing - without the $100,000 institutional minimum, and with daily holdings disclosure. They are genuinely new: each held only about $4 million at crawl with 0.35-0.37% bid-ask spreads and explicit new-fund risk disclosures, so larger investors may prefer the seasoned mutual funds until assets build. Distribution differs too - Paralel Distributors (unaffiliated) handles the ETFs versus Saturna's own brokerage for the mutual funds.

Around the funds sits the most complete halal account ecosystem in US asset management: Traditional, Roth, custodial, and inherited IRAs with no minimum investment for tax-sheltered accounts; the Shifa HSA, whose spending account deliberately accrues no interest and invests in the Amana menu through UMB Bank custody; Coverdell ESAs and UGMA/UTMA accounts; employer 401(k) plans; and halal trust services through Saturna Trust Company. Costs remain the honest trade-off: Investor-class expense ratios of 0.86%-1.20% carry a 0.25% 12b-1 fee, and while Saturna markets 'low turnover, be an investor not a speculator' discipline, passive halal ETFs undercut these fees substantially - which is precisely the gap the new Amana ETFs address.