Middle East & Africa | Crypto-godly

Does Islam smile on cryptocurrency?

Islamic scholars can’t agree on whether cryptocurrency is sharia-compliant

Two muslim men facing away from us, one holding up a stop sign and one holding up a Bitcoin.
Image: Lalalimola
|Dubai

“You know why they call it Bitcoin?” asks Ismail ibn Musa Menk, a Muslim scholar in Zimbabwe whose online videos have a big international viewership. “It bit us all,” he laments. “I got bitten too, you know.” Social-media users began to speculate if he had dabbled in the cryptocurrency.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Is it permissible?”

From the July 15th 2023 edition

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