Muslims Suffer from Lack of Services in Crypto World, Experts Say

The current decentralized ecosystem lacks the required tools to serve the Islamic community in a better way, according to experts.

Islamic Coin Co-founder Mohammed AlKaff AlHashm told Cointelegraph the Muslim community, which accounts for 1.9 billion of the world’s total population, is underserved in the decentralized world, elaborating that most blockchain networks lack the principles of Sharia.

AlHashm pointed out that cryptocurrency projects developed under Islamic law still fail to gain good adoption and success due to the presence of illegal activities, such as gambling and interest-charging projects.

“Muslims cannot be invited to conduct their transactions within a specific environment if the said ecosystem contains many projects that are not compatible with Islamic law, and this is what prompted us to develop a clean environment,” the co-founder of Islamic Coin said.

He asserted the importance of educating Muslims on the technologies of blockchain and cryptocurrencies to make a “clean ecosystem” successful.

He also pointed out that the Muslim community needs a halal stablecoin, as well as a halal exchange, which means the entire ecosystem should be ready in addition to more decentralized apps.

Building these tools and Muslim adoption of such technology and their transition to a decentralized world will take a long time, he added.

Meanwhile, Saeed Hareb Al Darmaki, the founder of Sheesha Finance, said that Muslims want to do something which is compatible with the Sharia, noting that there is no clear fatwa or ruling on cryptocurrencies in general.

He added that it is too early to judge the permissibility of cryptocurrency and Islamic finance in the cryptocurrency sector.

According to estimates from the cryptocurrency platform Triple A, overall, cryptocurrencies are used by only 4.2% of the total world population, which is more than 420 million people. At the same time, Muslim-majority countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan, and Indonesia have already made it into the top 10 for the number of cryptocurrency holders, according to BrokerChooser.