Islamic Expert on Shariah Acceptability: Halal Coin Is Only a Matter Of Time And Awareness

The Islamic financial world has some pretty big differences from its Western counterpart. For instance, in the Islamic regions of the world, the markets have to follow the Shariah, known as the Islamic law. There is not a complete separation between Church and State and this affects the economy as well.

As you may have expected, this obviously affects the crypto market, too. It is because of this that an Islamic expert called Suhaida Mahpot recently talked about the upcoming emergence of the “halal coin”. A halal coin would be a cryptocurrency that is “halal”, meaning that it is accepted by the Shariah standards.

One of the principles that a halal coin would need is to not be used in speculation, for instance. This is partly what makes the situation harder to define, as cryptos are often involved in speculation.

Mahpot, who is the CEO of Amanie Advisors, a Shariah advisory company, affirmed that it is only a matter of time and awareness before the first halal coin appears in the Islamic market. According to him, some investors are very skeptic of the Islamic market because of its own complex rules. This causes uncertainty and some investors simply decide that it will be profitable to invest elsewhere.

This is obviously bad for the countries, as they lose the change of getting investors that could help. Mahpot, which works in the industry for over 11 years, affirmed that Malaysia has a big potential for growth in the future.

Situation With Crypto Is Similar To Other Investments

According to Mahpot, the situation of the crypto market is very similar to two kinds of investments that were introduced in Malaysia before: Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB) and Amanah Saham Nasional (ASN).

He explained that the perception of these investments changed over time. They were created during the 90s and they are now considered “harus”, which means that they neither encouraged nor prohibited by the Shariah. Before there was consensus, there were plenty of doubts in the industry whether the investments were harus or “haram” (against the Shariah).

Now, the financial institutions of Muslim countries need more education about how cryptos work. Only this way they will be able to at least declare that they are harus. Without this, the uncertainty will be too big to convince investors to give the investment a shot.

Currency, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are starting to work on the creation of a new cryptocurrency. Also, there are several companies which claim that they have created a fully halal token such as ADAB Solutions, which created the so-called First Islamic Crypto Exchange. So far, nobody actually accepted these tokens as halal.