Pakistan's Grand Mufti ruled all cryptocurrency is haram. Does that mean I should stop all my crypto investments?

The Grand Mufti's ruling deserves serious engagement rather than dismissal. Mufti Taqi Usmani is one of the most respected Islamic finance scholars alive today and his concerns about cryptocurrency speculation, Gharar, and potential harm to ordinary investors are legitimate. However a ruling from one scholar, however respected, does not settle a question on which qualified scholars genuinely disagree.

CoinStudy submitted this exact question to our Shariah Board Chairman Dr. Usman Quddus, PhD in Islamic Studies and Finance under AAOIFI standards. His response presents the classical fiqhi definition of mal across all four schools of thought and demonstrates that the majority position from the Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali schools does not require physical tangibility for something to qualify as legitimate wealth. Imam Shafi'i defined mal as everything that has financial value, people exchange it, and if someone destroys it compensation becomes obligatory. Under this majority definition, digital assets with genuine economic value, utility, and social acceptance qualify as mal.

The chairman cited three of the most authoritative contemporary Islamic finance voices on this question. Dr. Ali Muhyiddin Al-Qaradaghi, President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, has stated that cryptocurrency without severe Gharar that people accept as a means of value transfer qualifies as mal and is principally permissible. Professor Dr. Ali Ahmad Al-Salus of Qatar University holds that digital assets with genuine utility that society accepts as mal fall under the rulings of mal. The Shariah Advisory Council of the Securities Commission Malaysia issued an official 2020 resolution declaring digital tokens and cryptocurrencies to be Mal-e-Mutaqawwam and permissible for Muslim investors to trade and invest in.

The chairman's conclusion is that the weight of contemporary Islamic finance scholarship, supported by these major global authorities, is that cryptocurrency can qualify as permissible mal when assessed individually through proper fiqhi methodology. This is not a blanket permission for all cryptocurrency. Bitcoin with fifteen years of operational history and genuine global acceptance as a store of value sits in a completely different category from a meme coin with no utility and purely speculative market activity. The blanket fatwa treats these as the same thing. CoinStudy's methodology does not.

Muslim investors who have been uncertain since the Grand Mufti's ruling should understand that their uncertainty is appropriate given genuine scholarly disagreement, that respected contemporary scholars and institutions have taken a different position, and that the most intellectually honest approach is individual assessment of each specific cryptocurrency through proper fiqhi methodology rather than blanket acceptance or rejection of an entire asset class.