As a family man, neuroscientist, business owner, and community leader Dr Muhammad Hassan is a busy man.
Challenges of the Muslim faith mean he has to carefully navigate finance.
"We have a very strict measure regarding interest."
Islamic principles means earning interest (riba) is not allowed.
Loans for a business or a mortgage to buy a house becomes problematic for Muslims.
His wife Yao Lu is Chinese and is also a Muslim convert.
Dr Hassan said he explored the question of interest as it was very important to understand from a personal perspective.
"I investigated, I thought about it, I meditated about it ."
An example that made sense to him was imagining a rich man, with a million dollars saved in a bank.
"So generally speaking, a conventional bank, they use that money to loan, give it as a loan to someone who needs the money."
A middle class or poor man who needed money to buy a house, a car, or to start a business, would go to a bank to get a loan.
"But the loans has a caveat, it has a problem attached to it, and that is the interest, which is not actually usually fixed, it can go up and down, depending upon the economy."
The bank was earning money through that loan, and the rich man was getting income as well from that interest.
"So if I look at that, this is basically transfer of cash from that poor man, to the rich man."
Charity was also an important part of Islam, so if someone had savings beyond what was needed for themselves and their family they would then give a percentage of that to others.
"Let's say I have savings above a certain amount, that means that I'm not using that money.
"Two point five percent of that I give to charity every year."
He and his wife were renting, and his wife aspired to own their own home, but this was difficult to achieve, Dr Hassan said.
University of Otago senior lecturer in finance Dr Muhammad Tahir Suleman said Islamic finance was a type of finance which was based on sharia compliance.
"So sharia compliance is based on the teaching of the holy Quran."
For Muslims the Quran is the word of Allah, the God — "so we cannot make any changes in it".
As a document that was about 1400 years old, Islamic scholars had interpreted the Quran to settle on finance options that were sharia compliant.
Dr Suleman said he saw three options for Muslims living in New Zealand.
The government could provide more home-owning options that would be compliant with Islamic finance, such as rent-to-own.
Banks or building companies could also provide options, such as buying a house and allowing a family to repay in instalments.
The Muslim community could help each other by pooling funds.
"In Dunedin, if there are say, 500 Muslims living here and one wants to buy a house. What would happen in that fund, everyone will put money in and then they will do a draw for who will buy the first house."
"I think more specifically in New Zealand, there is not much awareness of Islamic financing."
