As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and more. Cryptocurrency has continuously made headlines in recent years, but despite the popularity of the subject, it seems like by the time there is consensus on the issue, we would have either missed out or many Muslims would need to cleanse their income right now. What should Muslims know about investing in cryptocurrency? How can we be mindful of Islamic values while trying to keep up with the latest trends in Islamic finance or in finance in general? And what can we do to take ownership of our financial future? Welcome to a new episode of Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute about the questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. If you like what you hear and you'd like to share some feedback with us, please let us know your feedback directly in the link in the show notes. I'm Mohammed Zahed and today we're exploring how Muslims fit into the world of cryptocurrency. And with me is Sheikh Joe Bradford, one of the leading experts on issues involving Muslims and finance in North America. Sheikh Joe holds a Master of Islamic Law from the University of Medina and has studied traditionally in the Muslim world for the past 20 or so years. He was a VP and senior Sharia consultant for Al-Rashhi Bank, the largest Islamic bank in the Middle East. He's the co-founder of MyWasiyah.com for Islamic estate planning and he's a Sharia advisor for Zoya Finance for Islamic investing. He's also the creator of Money Coach for Islamic financial coaching and consulting. Enjoy the episode. As-salamu alaykum Sheikh Joe and welcome to Double Take. Wa alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Sheikh, I'm angry. I'm angry because in 2016 I was in Madrid with a few friends
and they were raving on about Bitcoin and how it's the future. And at that point the price was hovering at around $400. And I asked my Islamic finance guru friends whether I'm good to buy and the general response was absolutely no. It's a grey area at best and stay away from the grey area. They mentioned that Bitcoin was developed for the black market and that it was a currency, if you like, that had no serious proper backing. And so I plead the fifth as to what I did in 2016. But I'm angry because it's 2022, I'm a husband, I'm a father and I need to make money and it wasn't too long ago when Bitcoin peaked at almost $70,000. And so it seems to me that if you were to poll different scholars, even today in 2022, about the rulings on crypto, is it halal, is it haram, there is no clear answer or a consensus. By the time there is a consensus we would have missed the boat. So my first question to you is, why is it the case that it takes us that long to come up with a ruling on crypto? Yeah, so that's a very good question and I think that it can be answered in two parts. One has to do kind of with the community dynamics of scholarship and the other has to do with the scholar himself. The latter is probably easier to answer and quicker in that al-hukum ala shay far'un an tasawwurihi that to rule on something is contingent on conceptualizing it. And so when you're talking about something which is abstract,
like a digital currency, there is always going to be a bit of a runway that's needed in order to figure out what it is, how it's going to be used, how it's going to be issued, who's behind it. And so it's not strange to find scholars taking cautious stances and to essentially kind of place, I don't want to say place their bets, but to be more cautious when giving fatwa on things. As there's a general usooli, as far as the principles of Islamic jurisprudence go, most scholars said that the mufti, his job is to essentially give fatwa with what would be safest in the akhira. Now does that mean safest in the akhira for the mufti or for the mustafti, for the one asking for the fatwa or the one giving it? Generally they say both. There is a minority though that would say that has to do with acts of worship where you do what's safest for the mustaftis, the person asking the fatwa's question or situation in the akhira. And as far as mu'amalat or civil dealings, then you do the opposite. You do what is safest for their dunya as the base ruling for all things is that they are permissible until proven otherwise. That's exactly the point. Like I was always taught that things are halal until they're haram. So if you're saying that it's better to be risk averse and protect your akhira, then that seems a little bit contradictory. Absolutely.
And this kind of goes into the, there's a lot of interconnected points here. That certainly is it. So the retort to that would be, well, yes, we agree that everything which is, the base ruling for everything that's permissible until proven otherwise, but we're being told that bitcoin is used in the black market. We're being told that it was started by some guy whose identity is not even known. We're being told X, Y, Z. And so that incorrect information in the beginning lent to people and to scholars even opining on it. Now, the scholar who opines on something that's brought to him is not necessarily to blame for answering according to the information presented to him. We can't absolve ourselves as individuals. And the whole chapters of Ijtihad and Mufti wa Mustafti in books of Usul al-Fiqh mention this, that the person asking the question does have a moral responsibility to present information about what they're asking about in a clear, concise manner. And so I think one of the issues is that much of the information wasn't being presented in a technical sense that scholars could decipher. And the other is that many of the scholars would say, for example, take information from a trusted party or see that a lot of people were saying the same things and then answer accordingly. And the problem with that is that the only real way to solve that is time. And by that time, you've missed the boat. Yeah, I mean, it's further complicated by not just the time issue
but the fact that there's a tendency in the community now, as you had prefaced your question, you said, is there ever going to be a consensus? And there's a tendency in the community to want a consensus, to want to know what the majority says, to want to know, you know, who are the big names that have opined on this? And the problem is that Islamic law doesn't work like that. It never really has worked like that. It's not necessary to, for example, have the agreement of every single scholar in the world in order for a fatwa to be correct or for it to be followable by anyone who asks a question. It needs correct facts that it should be based on and it should be grounded in the principles of the Sharia. So that idea of having to wait for this consensus to form, I believe, has pushed everybody down to the lowest common denominator. To say, well, we're not going to say anything or we're going to say what everybody else has said to be safe, going back to that safety issue, we're going to be safe and what that's done is that it's easy to be difficult. I mean, even some of the salaf like Sufyan, may Allah have mercy on him, he said, أَمَّ التَّشْدِيدُ فَيُحْسِنُهُ كُلُّ أَحَدٌ وَلَكِنْ رُخصَةٌ مِّن فَقِيمٍ Being difficult, everyone can do that. Everyone's good at doing that. But we seek dispensations from a jurist, someone who's qualified. So many things that kind of play into why certain opinions, and even myself, back in 2012, 2013, even though I was involved in the space,
I was still extremely skeptical of many of the cryptocurrencies because of the information that was reaching me. So it was difficult, but I don't believe it's a lost cause. Let's put it that way. Fair enough. Congratulations, I guess, is the calling. So I was going to say, what I understood from you, Sheikh, is that to have a fatwa, you need clear facts, and you need to be able to fathom what you're making a fatwa on. And in a world where you could ask 10 people what the metaverse is, you get 10 different answers, things are relatively blurry in this space because it's new, and it's moving very, very quickly. So I'm going to ask you later, I'll come back to the question I was about to ask, which is, okay, well, what do you do as a Muslim who's trying to make money in that context where you can't just wait for a fatwa because you'll be waiting three or four years and you would have missed the boat. So I'll ask that in a few moments, but let's go back after all these years, and you've been in the space now, mashallah, for the past 10 years. Clearly, you've studied crypto very, very comprehensively. What are the main things that scholars argue for and against its halalness, so to speak? So what makes it halal and what would make some scholars say it's haram? So as far as those who would say, you know, what makes it haram, their general retort has been that it is something new, the origins of which are unknown, that it contains a certain amount of uncertainty
and a certain amount of lack of knowledge of the issuers and the underlying technologies and that the... Now, then we can go kind of in two ways. Some would say, well, some of them would say, well, as technology, we can recognize technology, but it can never be currency because according to their madahib, currency has to be hard currency. It has to have an actual tangible form and it has to be something that has intrinsic value. Whereas other scholars say, no, currency can have an intangible form and it can have extrinsic value, meaning the value comes from the value that is given to it by people. However, it's not being issued by legitimate authorities that are those who should issue currency. And so it's kind of a combination of does the principles of what's considered mal or wealth in Islam apply to this thing? And if it does, when does it go from merely being an asset that's part of someone's wealth to being actual currency? And can that currency be electronic or must it be hard currency? And then based on that is kind of where those scholars who would say... So scholars who say that it has to be hard currency, has to be gold or silver or something in hand, even like a representative or a fiat currency, then they would say, well, we're not going to allow it as a currency. And that's where the Indonesian Fetwa Council landed.
They actually didn't make cryptocurrencies haram as a digital asset. They said it can be traded as a digital asset if it has a benefit and it's known as any asset can be traded. Much like you would buy and sell a copy of software that's only kept on a hard drive or a shared drive. But it cannot be used as currency because in the Shafi'i school, predominant school in Indonesia, it must have a tangible presence in real life. Other scholars said, well, we don't necessarily have to have a tangible presence, but we don't find that it's being issued by known authorities and known individuals. So there's a level of uncertainty and a level of ignorance about it that is unsolvable. We won't ever be able to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, so therefore Bitcoin is impermissible. But doesn't that sound like counterintuitive? Because the whole idea of being on the blockchain is that there's communal verification, right? And so isn't that enough? Like when we look at Hadith, for example, if someone goes and fabricates a Hadith, then it's the community that stands up against that. There's no kind of Hadith authority, is there? You know, that's an excellent analogy. That's an excellent analogy, and you actually touch on something that a lot of later scholars and especially modern researchers have gotten wrong. The power of the authenticity of a single Hadith is not in its Isnad even.
It's not in the single Isnad. It's in the fact that that Isnad, in comparison to all the other Asanid, is in line with what we know to be the truth as narrated from the Prophet ﷺ. So we have this immense communal kind of coalescence of minds that have related this from generation upon generation. And then when somebody pops up and fabricates something, even if they stick the most authentic Isnad on it, everyone's going to go, that doesn't fit in with the framework that we already have, like this mass of information. So I really love that analogy. It's the first time I'm hearing somebody make that comparison. Masha'Allah alayk. But it's really good in that it is very much the same thing. So consensus mechanisms in cryptocurrency, and there's about nine different consensus mechanisms, they essentially verify for you through either work, which is like digital algorithmic calculations done by computers and chips, and it's kind of mined from that, or it's a proof of stake in that you become a member of a community and through proving your membership in that community and attributing calculating power to the overall system, you're able to be awarded with cryptocurrency. And through that, there's like a whole consensus that's created that either by proof of work or proof of stake or proof of history, and Byzantine structure, there's a couple of others that have like voting options in them. They essentially prove that this person who's part of our network is not a bad actor,
they're not trying to defraud anyone, they're providing benefit, and they've been awarded a block from the blockchain, which when it accumulates will become a token, and that token is part of either our token system or cryptocurrency or whatever exists in the world of digital assets. That whole thing is organic. And this is one of the main retorts to those scholars that said, well, the issuer of Bitcoin or Ethereum or whomever, whatever it is, because Bitcoin is proof of work, you have to have your computer calculate it, Litecoin the same, Dogecoin the same, you have to have a node on the network, do calculations, and show that you've put in the work and then you're awarded this. So the point that I'm making is that the idea that you have to have a single authority is a late, let me rephrase that, not rephrase it, but let me contextualize it. In the history of Islam, when we look at the very first generations of Islam, I mean, I'm talking about the first three to four to five generations of Islam, in the history of the earliest Muslim generations, they call it Sadr al-Awwal, the idea that you have to have a single authority issue a mint for currency is late in that period, meaning that those same scholars, may Allah bless them and put barakah in their knowledge, were in no way being derogatory to them for their opinion.
They based their opinion on whatever information and facts have come to them. But they will often, and this is almost the singular quote that I found through all of the fatawi that have come out, and that is that Imam Ahmed says that it is impermissible to use currency that does not come from the official Muslim authorities, because if it was... If it was not the case we use their currency, there would be rampant fraud and disenfranchisement of people's wealth. They say, see, that proves Imam Ahmed thought that currency can only come from the legitimate authorities. I mean, and as someone who is committed to the tradition, if you heard that, what would you say? It's haram, that's it. Yeah, you would say, Imam Ahmed, one of the four Imams, he's being quoted by Ibn Muflih, one of the authorities of his madhab. Now I find scholars of other madhab in the modern period quoting that, must be right. Problem is, on the same page of al-thurur, where Ibn Muflih quotes Imam Ahmed, also mentions that Imam Ahmed held that if a legitimate Muslim authority, even though they had issued their own currency, ruled over a group of people who were using the currency of another people, that the zakat collector would still collect zakat because the people believed that currency to hold value amongst them. So just so I understand what you're saying, because really the point that I'm hearing is that it's very complicated. Maybe it's very clear in your mind because you studied it really well, mashallah, but it is complicated.
But just before I move back into, you know, what are you saying? Before we go away from the issue of complication, because let me just say this last thing. Yeah, go for it. What Imam Ahmed is basically saying is that when you have a number of different governments, and a number of different coins that are issued, and a number of different things that people think have value, the important thing is that a homogenous group of people believes that it has value and they use it as a currency amongst them. And that is in line with what we find all the way back to the life of the Prophet, alayhi salat wa salam. In that the Prophet, alayhi salat wa salam, during his lifetime, they would use the dirham. Even the word in Arabic, dirham, it comes from the Greek, the rahma. The dinar, right? The gold coin. It comes from the Roman, the Latin, dinaris. So the gold and silver coins of the Romans, the Abyssinians, the Sassanians, the Persians, were all used at that time. I mean, in fact, one of the neat things that you'll find in numismatics when you study history of coins, you'll find a coin with like Abdul Malik ibn Marwan, his picture and his rule, stamped on one side with la ilaha illa Muhammad Rasulallah. And on the other side, it'll be like a cross on an altar. Sometimes they modify the cross or sometimes they just leave it. Or on the other side would be like Khosrow, the emperor of Persia, because they were just reusing the coins that were in circulation, that had value amongst people. The point is that if it's recognized as currency amongst a group of people, then it's currency. Yeah. I mean, even Imam Malik, Imam Malik, I believe this is in Al-Mudawwana,
he said, you know, if the people were to go and take the leather of camels and make denominations and cut them into pieces and trade with them, I would prohibit riba amongst it and it would force them to pay the cap. Even though the camel leather doesn't have any intrinsic value beyond it being leather, right? So to summarize this point about the halalness and the haramness, those who are in the haram camp, either they don't have the correct facts about cryptocurrency or they don't know about it enough to be able to make a final judgment, or that they've categorized it as currency and for them currency needs to have a solid backing. Exactly. The other, and so some of the scholars have kind of gone around that and say, actually, you don't need to consider it as a currency, just consider it as a digital asset, and therefore it has different rules and therefore it's halal. And the other one around it being created for the black market, you just kind of outright wrote that off. Yeah, it studies, so that's been a very early accusation. And there have been studies, academic studies, that have analyzed the blockchains of numerous coins. And they have found that not only has it not been used for black market transactions, that illegal transactions that have been done on blockchain have made it easier to track and thus arrest the people that were guilty of it. I mean, recently there was a very cringy TikTok star that along with her boyfriend,
that's a banker in New York, stole something like a billion worth of Bitcoin or something. Some ridiculously large number. And they were immediately caught. Even though they did a huge elaborate scheme, they were immediately caught. Why? Because the paper trail is there. So the idea, it's like saying I can't use the American dollar because the American dollar is used to stabilize governments all around the world. Which it is, right? But that doesn't mean that I as an individual can't earn in dollars and spend dollars and save and invest in dollars. So I want to go back to the humble Mohammed Zout of 2016, right? Who's trying to make money. I'm hustling. And going to wait for us to agree on cryptocurrencies or NFTs or whatever. How do I navigate this as a simple Muslim trying to protect my religion, but absolutely keep with the times and not miss the boat? So I'll build on your Hadith example from earlier, because this brings back to a memory of when I was studying in Medina. One of my neighbors was a beautiful soul and an amazing scholar by the name of Nader Snosi. Allah Ya Hamo, from Libya. And I used to read Mustalah Al-Hadith and we used to read through Fath Al-Bari. In Fath Al-Bari, Al-Hafidh Ibn Hajar will come across narrations that are not found in Sahih Al-Bukhari. So Fath Al-Bari has an explanation of Bukhari. In his explanation he would say, and what Bukhari mentions actually has a story, and that story is mentioned in the Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaiba.
Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaiba is a collection of narrations, predominantly from the companions and the Tabi'in, but some Ahadith as well, that gives a lot more kind of social context to a lot of what was being said. Some of them are strong narrations, some of them are weak. I said to him, I said, you know, Al-Hafidh Ibn Hajar will mention this narration and then he'll say it's Hasan. So how do I know? How will I ever know that the narration he mentioned will match the rules of it being Hasan? And he laughed and he said, I asked this exact same question to Sheikh Mukhbir Ibn Hadi Al-Wadi' when he was visiting during Hajj, something like 10 years ago. And this was 20 years ago in Medina. And he said, I'm going to tell you what he told me. He told me, trust Al-Hafidh Ibn Hajar or learn the rules that are set for this and then apply it yourself. And the more you learn, the clearer it will become to you until you won't have to second guess it. So pivoting back to the idea of us as laypeople and dealing with these types of things. It's imperative that any person that involves themselves in a particular area of business, a particular area of life, understands the rules of it. Umar Ibn Khattab would prevent people from selling in the marketplace of Medina if they didn't know the basic fiqh of transactions. Because he wanted to prevent people falling into mistakes and fraud and things like that.
And he put Shifa Ibn Abdullah as a judge and a mediator over the people of the marketplace. Now, I say that to say that if you're a common Muslim and all you care about is your prayer and your fasts and you don't have much money, then you need to learn how to pray. You need to learn the rules to pray. Every time you go to pray, you don't go and ask a scholar how to pray. You know the rules to pray. You know what breaks your wudu. If you earn money to the point that you have enough money for zakah, then you need to learn the rules that apply to zakah. And then you apply those yourself. If you're doing business, you need to understand the rules of doing business. And then you apply those yourself. Only when there's something which is kind of beyond you, that you would go. One of the problems that we have in the community as a general level of Islamic literacy is that people who have extremely high levels of literacy in the sciences and literature and life in general still act like adolescents in their Islamic knowledge. And they are extremely hesitant to apply the principles of Islam to life situations and civil dealings just like they do for their fasting and their hajj and their zakah and their salah and so on and so forth. So going back to you know, Humble Muhammad of 2016, you know, had we met at that time, it would have been, my advice would have been
learn the principles of what makes a currency a currency, what makes business legitimate business and be mindful of Allah as much as you're able to. So you're not precluded, you don't have to go and shut every door and then go and ask someone, should I open it? Should I open it? No, the doors that are open, there's nothing that is clearly haram, right? What you're dealing with as a product, as a use case is not clearly haram. There's no clear riba, there's no clear uncertainty, there's no clear zulum, misappropriation of wealth. Then it's permissible for you to deal with that until evidence comes to the contrary. But this is a fine line here, right? It doesn't mean do anything that you want and then go and correct it afterwards. It means learn the general principles that apply, apply them and continue in their application until something happens, right? So, you know, get your driver's license to drive the car, then drive wherever you want, right? Are you saying that it's okay that the scholars take their time? And rightly so, they're risk averse at the beginning with something that's very new. They're going to take their time. It's going to take a decade before you get some sort of proper fatwa or consensus at best. And up until that point, you just do your due diligence, you learn the basics and off you go. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we are not an ecclesiastical religion. We do not need, fatwas are not like, are not papal edicts from Rome.
We are not bound by a single authority. And this has been one of the problems with group fatwa, fatwa al-jama'i, right? Fatwa al-jama'i, that it's been impressed upon people to the point where instead of asking an individual scholar, and even sometimes asking more than one scholar, right? It's been impressed upon that if you ask more than one scholar, you're fatwa shopping. If you don't wait for a consensus, you're doing something that's not safe. When throughout the history of Islam, fatwa has always been an edict or an answer specific to the questioner. And so personal responsibility and knowledge of the deen has to be inculcated in each and every one of us, right? Now, obviously, we may have our own personal doubts. And we can get rid of those doubts by consulting experts and learning more about what we're doing. But if we treated medicine the way that we treat, say, fatwas on cryptocurrency, we would probably never take medicine and many people would die. You're reminding me of the hadith of Anas ibn Malik radiallahu anhu, where Prophet ﷺ was walking past people who are grafting trees, and he said, it's probably best you don't do that. And so they stopped because they took it as a law. And then when the crops started to reduce, the Prophet ﷺ was like, what happened to your harvest? What happened to your crops? And they said, well, you told us not to do that. He said, like, you know, your work much more than I do, or what's that affect? So it kind of I don't know how you feel about that.
But for me, it's it's like, get on with it. Do the best of your ability to make sure that you're within the lanes of halalness, so long as you learn that. And well, the world is moving too quickly for us to wait for an official fatwa, I think. So so you so there's a very good point in that hadith and the hadith of Anas, it's in Sahih Muslim, that the Prophet ﷺ said, ma law taraqtumuha, what if you what would happen if you left it alone? So he didn't actually tell them. He asked the question. Now, they took it to be a rhetorical question, right? Like it's a rhetorical question in that he doesn't want us to do that. Right. And in fact, the Prophet ﷺ was simply asking about something that they were experts in. Because he was a person of Mecca, and the Mecca was a mercantile center. They were merchants. The people of Medina were people of agriculture. They had farms. They grew dates and herbs and shrubs and that type of thing. So he asked them, what would happen if you left it alone? So they did. And then, as you mentioned, they didn't get, you know, a bump crop that year. They came to complain. He said, antum a'lamu bish'uni dunyakum. You all have more knowledge of the affairs of your worldly life. And so so based on this, there is a there is a there is a level of expertise that is applicable in every situation that does not need a religious edict. It was not does not need a fatwa in order for it to be OK. Right. We don't need to, for example, get a fatwa whether or not we should change the oil in our car, because we know if we don't change the oil in our car, eventually it's going to break down.
Right. So similarly, this is something which is facts, factual, empirical. It's it's it's it's practical. And that doesn't mean that doesn't need a fatwa. Now, notice in something that that's not simply. Not simply an applied science, if you will. Right. It's not just taking the facts and applying them to the situation, but it has to do with with social interactions that can be impaired due to lack of clarity. Similar thing. The Hadith of Abdullah ibn Abbas, the Prophet, peace be upon him, came to Medina. He found people selling doing forward sales of their crops one or two years in advance. So he said, whoever sells in advance should do so for a known quantity or a known volume and a known delivery time. So he didn't he didn't abrogate or annul the fact that they could do those types of sales. He didn't have to say he didn't say, you know, oh, people selling dates, you know, is permissible and then selling them in advance is permissible. He he built on the social structures and the the the legal structures that were there. But he amended it when there would have caused an impairment and caused, you know, just dissent and discord and hatred amongst people by causing conflict because of a lack of clarity on how much or how little or when those things were being delivered. So, you know, we build upon, you know, the real world knowledge that we have. And then the shara is the arbiter of disputes that arise after that.
Oh, OK. Let's just say I'm because you coach a lot of Muslims and Muslim businesses around wealth management, protecting their wealth, etc. So that's that's good. So someone like myself who is relatively risk averse and I hear the hadith and I hear the hadith of like, you know, if you're feeding your children from from not halal money, then your dua is not accepted. If I'm not mistaken, you know, and that that scares me. So I I am risk averse. I am cautious. So but I want to invest and I want to make money because I have Lebanese blood, you know, and and so tell me then what you would advise a God fearing Muslim around investing. What I would advise a God fearing Muslim to do is, first of all, educate yourself on the mechanics of the market that you want to invest in. If we were going to buy a car, we would want to understand what the engine is, how much it's going to cost me, how it's going to run, what the upkeep is, and get the general information about that, that, you know, that car. Similarly, the investment vehicles that you want to invest in, you should at least know enough about the engine. Enough so that when you do invest in it, you don't later doubt yourself to the point that you feel that you're being ripped off, even though you may not be right. So the the the one of the big one of the big problems that that I find is that it's not a lack of information. It's not a lack of opportunity. It's not even a lack of aptitude on most people. It's one thing and one thing alone that makes them more risk averse than anyone else. Can you guess what that is? Tell me, sir. It's fear. It's fear of loss.
It's fear of haram. It's fear. It's fear of what's new. Right. So we as human beings, we have an innate sense of fear. That's kind of part of our flight and flight fight or flight response. Right. And so if we fear something, we'll run away from it. When in reality, you know, we need to kind of fight a little bit and find out what's going on. And fear of haram is valid. But fear of haram where it doesn't exist is ghuloo. It's extremism. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, Inna hadha al-dina yusrun wa la yushad al-dina ahadun illa ghalaba. This faith is Eid. And no one will buck this faith except that it will throw him off. I don't know. Do you guys have rodeos there in Australia? No, but I'm sure they have something else. You have horseback riding? We do have the outback, of course. Do you guys do like bronco busting? Not that I know of. Do you have a wild horse? We're more likely to have like wild kangaroos and like, you know, see them fighting. The point being here is the Prophet, peace be upon him, is giving us a metaphor for the deen. So this deen is ease. But if you try to jump on the back of an animal and wrestle it to the ground, it will buck you off. How do you train an animal which is wild? You either are going to grab it in bronco bucket and try and run it into the ground, which is extremely oppressive and very harmful to you, or you're going to approach it with ease, understand it. You know, this is why, you know, if you've ever seen shows about like horse whispers, people who are so gentle in their approach that horses essentially just kind of tame out of their care for them.
Right. So the idea is that metaphor is there. And so when people approach everything as it's being haram, not only are they creating difficulty for themselves, they are going against the sunnah of Allah and his messenger in what he has permitted and what they have permitted for us. So, you know, it is he who has made everything for you in the earth. So everything that is available for us is not so that we can clench our fists back or, you know, clutch our pearls and say, no, no, no, we can't deal with the life around us. It's for us to explore and to investigate and to learn and to use for our benefit. So that's the number one thing. Is there a benefit in this thing that works for me? And then the halal is clear and the haram is clear. Halal is clear. Haram is clear. Problem with a lot of people in our community is that the haram is clear in the shara, but they conflate the haram in their upbringing, which maybe is considered just whatever is shameful, right? Or whatever was not part of their culture with what is unequivocally haram. And people do that for the halal as well, right? So we have to get out of just kind of living on autopilot as Muslims and really take advantage of, you know, the dispensations and the allowances and the knowledge that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has sent down for us to be able to benefit from our lives. The hadith of Umar radiallahu anhu comes to mind. You know, why is it that we shorten the prayer now that, you know, the disbelievers have been subjugated and we no longer fear for ourselves when we travel, right? The Prophet ﷺ said,
Indeed Allah loves that you take the dispensations He gave you just as He loves for you to avoid that which He's forbidden for you. So this level of precaution, which is rooted in our own inadequacies and insecurities is against the shara. Yeah, I think what we often do is, yes, halal is bayan and haram is clear as well. And the gray area in between is instead of kind of learning the basics to navigate through the gray area, we just write off the gray area completely. Exactly. And in the remainder of that hadith from from al-Nu'man ibn Bashir, you know, mentions that, you know, that it's not they're not known. The gray area is not known by a lot of people, meaning that there are some people who know it. And you can become one of those people that know it if you educate yourself. Fair enough. So then how do I become the crypto whisperer then? How do I? So you've told me what I need to do in terms of investment in general. OK, fair enough. But I want to get into crypto, right? I probably missed the boat on a couple of coins. So what what would you say is the appropriate process for a Muslim who's getting into the space? So I would say first, just learn some basics of fiqh al-buyyur, of the rules of transaction. And I'm not talking about, you know, becoming, you know, you don't have to become the next mufti taqdir al-thamani, right? But you should just know, like, what is considered wealth, what is not considered wealth? How is, you know, what's considered a valid trade versus an invalid trade? And it's quite simple. There's, you know, essentially four or five things that you need to check for.
And then from there, if you're going into the crypto world, understand how currencies are supposed to be traded under the sharia. And that is two very simple, you know, once you've qualified something as a currency, two simple rules. Can't trade a currency for the same currency, can't do gold for gold or silver for silver or dollar for dollar or bitcoin for bitcoin. It has to be one currency for a completely different currency. And that trade has to be a spot transaction. In fact, a lot of what we see in the crypto world with all of the volatility and all of the coins that fail, they fail because, shut on, they didn't fulfill the rules of transparent transactions that need to be there. Or they embedded in their systems, they started off as decentralized finance systems, and then they adopted the practices of the conventional finance system with seniorage and interest derivatives and so on and so forth, which, because of the speed at which the transactions happen, destroyed those coins and those ecosystems as well. So, you know, just learn the basics and then start to apply those basics to the coins. I think people will be surprised at how clear it will be that some things are acceptable and how clear it will be that some things either should be avoided due to valid precaution or because they're just clearly improper to invest in. OK, Jazakallah Khair. So my final question on the topic then is if my nine year old niece came to you and said,
I want to become a multimillionaire, inshallah, if Allah wills, and I want to do it in a halal manner, and I want to be mindful of Allah. What do I do? What is your response? Excellent question. I would say if you want to be mindful of Allah, be mindful of your money. Know how much you earn, how much you spend, how much you have left over. Then take that little bit that you have left over and consistently invest it into two things. Invest it into yourself by furthering your education, because the greatest investment and the most money we'll ever make in our life comes from what we primarily do as a career. And then secondly, take the take the bit that's left over and put it into a long term compounding investment, one that grows in halal investments over and over from the time that you're nine years old until you're 21. If you do that, you'll be a millionaire. Jazakallah Khair. Sheikh Joe, inshallah we'll have you again on Double Take because there's so much we can talk about with you. Barakallah Fiqh and I'm looking forward to you coming to Sydney so we can do this next one in person inshallah. I'm looking forward to coming to Sydney. The farthest I've been to that part of the world was Malaysia. And I know that I think that's just a hop, skip and a jump away. Stone's throw away, eight hours. Yeah, for us in Texas, that's nothing. That's a drive to the grocery store. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Just let me know and we'll definitely have to meet up and box some kangaroos and eat some camel meat and see the sights. And kangaroo sausages. Really?
So I'm not gonna let you go too easily. I'm gonna ask you some rapid fire questions and you have maximum of a few seconds. If you get the wrong answer, you're gonna have to donate a few bitcoins Sheikh. Question number one. Cardano or ripple? Ripple. Who is your favorite qara, the reciter of the Quran? Hands down, Mahmood Khalil Hussain. The last book that you were reading? The last book that I was reading is the Quranic phenomenon by Malik bin Nabi. Rahimahullah. Sounds good. What's your favorite dream breakfast? Oh, if, if, so if a classical French breakfast could have a baby with a Lebanese breakfast and a Moroccan breakfast, or have like a caravan of breakfasts, I would be very happy. So what would that be like? Fool with snails on top. Fool with snails? Yeah, imagine that snail musakhan, right? Yeah, you know, you know, omelets and eggs and the, you know, and, you know, zaitou zaatar and olives and all of the good stuff. I mean, it's a, that's a hard throw. If I would say between Lebanese and French, that would be like the pinnacle. If you could have dinner with one person who's alive, who would you choose? Dinner with one person who is alive, who would I choose? Man. Oh, that's a, that's a hard one.
I'll mix it up. What if it was someone who's passed away? Who would you choose? It can't be the Prophet. Yeah, if it was somebody who had passed away, it would be Najm al-Din al-Tawfi. Who, what, when? Sorry, I have to ask. Najm al-Din al-Tawfi was a very enigmatic and eclectic and controversial student of Ibn Taymiyya, who is considered to be one of the masters of usul and has his own theories about maslaha and, you know, just to give you an idea of like the controversy, he's a hambali that was accused of being a shia. Okay. And so he took chances on tackling issues that people were hesitant to. So he has a book on tafsir al-Quran called al-isharat al-ilahiyya, where he mentions a verse and then he says, okay, in this verse, this is what the mu'tazila say about it. And then the asha'is, and then ahl al-athar, and then the karamiya, and then he mentions all of the tawa'if about, you know, that say about those verses. And then he gives his own opinion. In usul al-fiqh, he kind of does something similar, but he's from this madrasah of usul al-fiqh that doesn't try to make it more difficult than it needs to be. He tries to make it easier. So, yeah, I'm just kind of amazed with him as a person. Yeah. Interesting. Your favorite go-to product from the baqala at Islamic University of Medina? I know this one directly. So there were these little cakes that were sold. They were imported from somewhere in Asia. They were called hoopoi. Okay.
And in the Americas, specifically in the Caribbean, they make something very similar that they call black-eye. And it's essentially a black-eye pea or a bean that is mixed with molasses and kind of, you know, melted down into a pastry mush, and then it's wrapped in a sweet pastry dough. That was my go-to. That and the zadi strawberry leban, the strawberry buttermilk drinks that they had while I was there. That was my go-to. I actually know exactly what you're talking about, the black bean paste. Really? I don't know how you did it, man. So your favorite place to travel in the US to talk about Islamic finance? Favorite place to travel in the US to talk about Islamic finance? I'm going to say Southern California. If you had to give someone one piece of advice, someone who doesn't have any money or much money, to help them take control of their financial future, what would it be? Create a budget. And the last thing, you have produced a lot of resources, you've come across a lot of resources. What's one resource that you'd recommend every one of our listeners consume? My book, Simple Zakat Guide. Sheikh Joe, Jazakallah Khair. Thank you so much. And inshallah, see you in Sydney as soon as possible. Wa alaikum salam. Wa alaikum salam. My pleasure. And I'm really hoping to make that a reality soon. So inshallah, we'll talk offline about that. May Allah bless you and continue the great work. I really enjoy watching the podcast and I appreciate the work you're doing. Shukran. Salam alaikum.