In recent days, the International Union of Muslim Scholars joined a number of jurisprudential references that issued fatwas against the permissibility of trading in Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
The debate about “analyzing or forbidding” digital currencies from the point of view of Islamic law is not a new one, as it was the focus of differing opinions between references.
In 2017, the Fatwa Secretariat of the Egyptian Ifta House announced that trading in these currencies “and dealing with them in buying, selling, leasing and others is forbidden by Sharia.”
In a fatwa issued in 2021, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments in the Emirates said that “virtual digital currencies may be traded.”
In the same year, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul-Manea, said in a television interview that digital currencies are “forbidden”, and likened them to “gambling”, considering that it is “from eating people’s money unjustly.”
