Who are your “friends?”
Are they the people who encourage, empower, motivate, believe in (maybe a bit more than you believe in yourself), lift you up, and defend you in your absence?
Or are they people who belittle you, laugh at you, talk about you behind your back, pull your leg, and always have a smartalic or negative comment to make?
You can choose.
Not everyone is meant to be your “friend” forever. Build genuine, authentic, and true friendships with those who share your values, priorities, and objectives.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah,
Alhamdulillah, I wanted to share a quick wrap-up from the SOAS/QFC Islamic Finance workshop in London.
The public lecture and workshop focused on rebuilding Islamic financial infrastructure for the digital age: tokenization, stablecoins, AI agents, smart contracts, Sharia governance, dispute resolution, and the future of Islamic finance.
What became clear very quickly is that the room was describing almost every problem that Bitcoin was created to solve: fiat debasement, censorship, lack of final settlement, counterparty risk, custodial risk, inflation, financial exclusion, and the capture of Islamic finance by conventional banking rails.
I was able to raise Bitcoin repeatedly in the formal sessions and in private conversations. The key points I emphasized were:
Bitcoin is not merely “crypto.” It is an ownable, scarce, transferable, verifiable digital property native to a neutral public settlement network.
Bitcoin offers final settlement without needing a bank, central bank, token issuer, custodian, or state permission.
Tokenized gold, stablecoins, and commodity-backed coins may have use cases, but they all reintroduce trust, custody, censorship, and counterparty risk.
Bitcoin is already being used by Muslims in the Global South for real economic activity, including the example of purchasing qurbani animals directly from farmers in Uganda using Bitcoin.
The most important proposal that emerged was the idea of a Bitcoin waqf / masjid Lightning network.
The concept is that masajid, Muslim institutions, and potentially OIC member communities could run Bitcoin/Lightning nodes, provide liquidity, support local merchants, and create Muslim-owned payment rails that are borderless, censorship-resistant, and rooted in community benefit.
This idea actually resonated with several scholars and practitioners because it connects Bitcoin to something deeply familiar in our tradition: waqf, community infrastructure, trust, and service.
A major theme was that many scholars and Islamic finance professionals are still waiting for governments or regulators to validate Bitcoin before giving it serious consideration. I pushed back on that strongly. If scholars wait for the state, and the state waits for scholars, nobody leads. The Ummah cannot outsource its monetary judgment to central banks, Wall Street, or regulators.
The takeaway for me is that the opportunity is much bigger than arguing “Bitcoin halal or haram.” We need to build a serious intellectual, legal, Sharia, and practical framework around Bitcoin as monetary infrastructure for the Ummah.
We need papers, pilots, scholars, technical people, masjid leaders, African and Asian community builders, and serious Bitcoiners working together.
This is not about selling a product. This is da’wah around money.
Bitcoin Majlis has real work to do.