Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
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Muslim Money Talk
Halal Crypto Expert : How To Invest in Bitcoin in 2025 | Ep 42 - Ibrahim Alkurd
Meet Ibrahim, a Palestinian born med school drop out who went on to build one of the UK’s largest crypto empires in both mining and trading.
Ibrahim shares his journey with us, why and how Muslims should be investing into crypto, as well as what Muslims should be focussing their skillsets on today.
This podcast is hosted by Areeb Siddiqui, the founder and CEO of Kestrl, the app that helps people to grow their wealth without compromise
Find out more about our app here: https://kestrl.io/
And how we help banks here: https://business.kestrl.io/
Show Notes:
00:00 - Opening
02:15 - Entering venture capital
03:54 - Dubai vs Riyadh for muslim entrepreneurs
05:29 - From medicine to bitcoin trading
07:10 - Can money still be made in cryptocurrencies?
08:22- Turning 2k into 12k through arbitrage trading
09:47- Definition: What exactly is cryptocurrency?
12:01- Similarities between Qu’ran memorisation and the blockchain
13:52- Why the early passion for bitcoin?
16:03- Launching the UK’s first bitcoin mining company
17:20- Having God level accountability
17:52- Early money/success impact to ego?
19:06- Definition: What is crypto mining?
21:32- Is crypto a scam?
23:38- How to buy and sell crypto ?
25:10- Keeping your crypto investment safe
26:18 - Using stable coins to send money
27:36 - Decentralised financial services: Islamic insurance and regulations
29:38 - Revolutionising Islamic Finance?
30:39 - Mainstream vs Meme coins
32:45 - Bitcoin = Gold? Ethereum = Oil?
34:29 - Can it really be a currency?
35:30 - Will bitcoin hit $1m USD?
37:00 - Is bitcoin shariah compliant?
38:51 - Breaking for Maghreb prayers
39:28 - Backing muslim founders with Niyyah Capital
41:55 - How to increase your Rizq?
44:29 - What keeps Muslims poor?
46:28 - Wahi: Memorising Hadiths through an app
48:37 - Favorite stories about wealth in the Qu’ran
You know, some people argue it's not money. I consider Bitcoin a store of value. I consider it a form of virtual gold, and I think it's the next evolution of assets that we have Now. I remember back in like 10 years ago, everyone said Bitcoin is a scam. Now it's like people are like Bitcoin is here to stay forever. Let's try and get ourselves involved in this space.
Speaker 1:You know, someone described it once as God level accountability. Right, like when you're doing something, when you are doing it for the sake of Allah, it really puts a drive in you that's like greater than any other thing. I think as long as we live in the same financial system, where money is being printed out of thin air, where government can print 30% of all the dollars in circulation in one year, like we saw in COVID, then Bitcoin will just keep going up. I always like to say this right Money without knowledge is dangerous because you don't know how to act with it, but knowledge without money is restrictive because you can't do the things that you want to do. So we want to combine the two for the biggest ultimate force, inshallah.
Speaker 2:Today's guest is one of the most impressive CVs that we've seen on this show so far. Despite his relative youth, mashaallah Ibrahim Al-Kurd is a Palestinian medical school dropout who went on to found multiple successful companies, such as Newmine, one of the UK's first enterprise level crypto mining entities, as well as several funds in the crypto space, which have gone on to become some of the best performing ones in the world. Today, we're going to be doing a deep dive into all things crypto. One of our most hotly requested topics how and why Muslims should be investing into cryptocurrencies and what the future could look like in this space. We're also going to look at what success means to entrepreneurs and how to identify where our true strengths lie as founders and as Muslims. As always, I'm your host, arif Siddiqui. And this episode a like and share it with your friends. Leave us a comment or a review, because it really really does help us out and help more people to find us. Thank you. Now back to the show, ibrahim. Assalamu alaikum.
Speaker 1:Thanks, salam alaikum.
Speaker 2:How are you? Alhamdulillah, really good. How are you man?
Speaker 1:Good. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2:No, you, man. Good, thank you for having me on. No, thanks, it's.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's a little bit different today, because usually I've like met the guest a few times before, but we literally just met like in the corridor outside. Well, the studio was a bit delayed, so we had like a 20 minute crash.
Speaker 2:Good, yeah, yeah, yeah went to the bathroom, did with you all of that, so I'm the load. No, it was really, really good. I first heard of you guys when you launched your venture capital fund a few years ago, nia, and I remember that really took the space by storm, because there weren't too many Islamic focused VCs at the time. Um, was that something you'd always wanted to do?
Speaker 1:I think when I started in entrepreneurship, my goal was to make money, uh, to be free, like financially free. And then, over time, you realize that you can only do so much with money and it becomes more about purpose. So near capital is a venture capital fund that invests into the muslim market and it was very purpose driven, right aligned with the fact that I like tech, that I like investing, I like finance. I said how can I add value to the muslim community?
Speaker 1:and that's by uh funding projects that can have an impact, a positive impact, on the umma, right yeah so investors are the the pillars of capitalism, because it's that, that money that investors invest, that funds innovation, that funds companies. Right? So our phones, the applications in our phones, they were all funded by investors. Without their money, the thing could have become a reality.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm launching a capital and it's amazing because one of the biggest problems muslim entrepreneurs face right now is lack of funding, lack of access to funding. So may Allah put barakah into your, your work and inshallah allow you to invest in more and more companies. Before we also start, could you settle a debate for us? Because last week we had Shahid Munir on and we were playing around with the thumbnail. One of the thumbnails we put in was Muslim entrepreneurs need to go to Dubai, and it started kind of a war in the comment section on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:You know who you are, the ones who started it with the saudi bros who came in saying forget, dubai is all about saudi. How do you feel about that? So I'm biased. I mean, I've lived in dubai for two years. Uh, I really enjoy it, alhamdulillah. I've got a great circle of friends. Uh, life here is easy. So, as I mentioned to you before, uh, because life is easy, you can focus your attention on the things that you want to do. You know your business, your dean, your health, or maybe you know I've got nothing against Saudi. I've been there, I enjoy it, but I feel that Dubai for me, it seems to be better.
Speaker 1:I think the answer comes down to the individual. What are you looking for? Like I'm young at an early stage in my career, like Dubai is more suited to this stage in my life, but it could become a stage later. Uh, you know where I feel like I should move to saudi right. So I think it's just personal preference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I have to say I've gone to real the lot in the last one, one and a half years just just for for work. I love the buzz, like it feels like something big is building there, but it's not an easy place. Um, people complain about traffic all the time but you can get into serious accidents on the road over there, like serious, serious accidents. We were in a taxi with someone who took a speed bump at like 60 miles an hour and, like myself and someone in my team, we just smashed our heads into the top of the car and it's like a very, very regular thing that happens over there.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, aside from that, love saudi, love saudi likewise yeah okay, so there's a lot that I want to talk to you about, but I know you've told this story many times before. Can we rewind to those very, very early days? You and your family came to the uk, you guys settled in manchester and you found yourself as a medical school student in uh, cardiff is that right, correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, but then something drew you towards the world of crypto, and this was pretty early on, like in 2016, 2017, a bit earlier yeah, so, uh, I was actually on a train journey, uh, before I went to university to go into school, right, and one of my friends he told me about, uh, bitcoin and uh, we were probably like it was probably like 14, 15 at the time uh, so we didn't have much money at that age as most people of that age so we tried to get some money together to buy a Bitcoin mining machine because we saw the numbers of how much money we can make, right and uh, so that never happened, but he, he introduced me to it and that opened the doors to like this fascination with crypto.
Speaker 1:So I was like I bought several books, I read about it, I read websites, like I went deep into it and I saved up some money. I worked in a call center to save up some money to invest into the market. Uh, also while learning about the industry. Right, how much did you say? A couple of grand, like $2,000. Uh, so I was like, okay, this thing can change the world.
Speaker 1:And like when I was growing up, I looked up to all these business people. So I was like this is mycom bubble, you know? Boom, because, like you know, I missed the dot-com because I was too young, but this crypto felt like compensated for it. Right, and at the time, uh, the industry was really immature. Like barely anyone knew what bitcoin was. Some of my friends would laugh at me, be like you're a loser. Look, you're invested, you're interested in bitcoin. Now these same friends are are interested in bitcoin just as much as me, if not more. Some of them, right, so, um, so, yeah, like I was just fascinated. I was like this is a good opportunity to build something as something that could change the world wow, okay, so do you think there's friends who are, like now, interested in it?
Speaker 2:do you feel like the ship has sailed a little bit or is there still an opportunity to to get into the space?
Speaker 1:so I still think we're early obviously not as early as we were 10 years ago, but I think that the opportunity to build something is still there. Uh, I mean, one of the things that's really needs improvement in the crypto space is user experience. Right, like a lot of the world, they don't have access to crypto very easily because the user experience is bad. Right until buying crypto and using crypto becomes as easy as using google or facebook, then we have a long way to go. So I always tell people it's still opportunity. And you know, the past is in the past. You can only look at the present and the future.
Speaker 1:And you know, unfortunately, we Muslims have a tendency to be behind a lot of other communities when it comes to building new things. Like if we look at the banking system, like we're decades behind. You know other communities and we're having to build on top of the tech that they built. So you know, for me, when I started I started crypto I was the only muslim that I knew that was in crypto. Now I can name a few, but I still can. I can name them on my fingers. Right, there's not that many people muslims in the crypto space, so we need more muslims in the crypto space and we'll get onto this, inshallah. I believe that the impact that crypto can have on sharia compliant uh and the sharia compliant sector and finance can be huge, inshallah inshallah, inshallah, and we're going to come into all of that.
Speaker 2:But going back to that $2,000 that you saved up, and then you started trading arbitrage trading, correct, is that right? So that's basically where you're buying crypto at a certain price on one exchange and you're trying to sell it at a higher price somewhere else. And what kind of margins were there at the time? Is it quite significant? I wish we could have the same margins.
Speaker 1:It was about 10 10 because bitcoin was like, say, like 150 dollars here and here it would be, you know, 165 dollars. So if you buy it here and you sell it here every time you're making 10 and you keep. You know you're circulating the money essentially. So now, because a lot of people caught on to this arbitrage strategy, you can only be making a fraction of a percent every, you know every in a certain period of time. Back then I was making making about 10% a day, so the money kept compounding.
Speaker 2:Why was it so different between exchanges? Was it just because it was so new?
Speaker 1:Exactly so. There were barely any exchanges, like if someone's running an exchange here, it can be like I can charge what you know 10% more and people are still going to pay that because, people want access to cryptocurrency. Right, and there were only a few cryptos was like when it was only bitcoin so like then. Obviously, ethereum came onto the scene. After ethereum, loads of different coins came onto the scene, but in the early stages, like when you said crypto, it was like people, people just understood crypto equals bitcoin yes and until today, like the, the dominance of the entire crypto sector is about 50 bitcoin.
Speaker 1:So bitcoin is still a big dog, right, but it's like now we're getting different coins coming out, they're building different techs, the different purposes, uh, and we're seeing like more of an evolution in the space. But back then it was very simple.
Speaker 2:Interesting, so just a quick double click into that. How would you define cryptocurrency?
Speaker 1:So Bitcoin was created by a pseudo, anonymous individual called Satoshi Nakamoto. So he created essentially a virtual form of cash, and this is essentially something that allows me to transfer my cryptocurrency to you without the need of a middle party. So right now, if I want to send my money from my bank to your bank, it has to go through my bank and your bank, so there has to be a middle man in the process, right? But with cryptocurrency, you can move assets across the world in an instant, pretty much between individuals, without a middleman. So if I was to explain cryptocurrency, it's a virtual form of cash, a virtual form of storing an asset right now. Obviously, there's different types of cryptocurrencies and I'm just talking about the early stages of what we we refer to as a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 2:but that's if I was to break it down very simply okay, a virtual form of cash, but all being distributed through a decentralized network instead of it going towards some kind of centralized authority like a bank, and I guess, in theory, that puts the power back into the hands of the people uh, without one person being able to, in theory, amass all of these bitcoins, um, bitcoins or crypto together, although in reality I think it may be a little bit different yeah.
Speaker 1:So to add to that like so your, your money that's in your bank is not owned by you, it's owned by your bank. If your bank comes and says we're going to freeze your assets, there's nothing you can do about it, because it's just numbers on a screen for you, right? But with cryptocurrency, let's say, you have bitcoin in your wallet, like, you have control of that. You, you have discretionary of where that goes. It gives you true, like uh autonomy over it, right? So the other thing about it is that on the blockchain so the essentially, the blockchain is a ledger by every transaction that moves in a cryptocurrency is logged. So it means that there's a continuous log of everything that happens. And that's actually the Islamic way that transaction, you know, we know in our religion that whenever a transaction happens, it should be logged, and the blockchain does that. It logs every single transaction that's ever happened.
Speaker 1:So it's it's a really incredible tech. And it's a really incredible tech and it's kind of uh if we think of, like, what money? You know, some people argue it's not money. I, I consider bitcoin a store of value, I consider it a form of virtual gold, and I think it's the next evolution of uh assets that we have. You know, the last evolution we had was debit cards and credit cards. Now the cryptocurrencies is the next evolution of that for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:You just reminded me of something haris Rafan once said to me, which was that when you look at how the Quran was propagated over the ages and passed down through the oral tradition, he said that was effectively a blockchain in a way in that you have all these different individuals verifying and checking it, and then you could see the chain of distribution like who learned from who? Who learned from who, all the way back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. So, allah, who knows Allah?
Speaker 2:So a slight aside, but it does have like Islamic connotation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see why you say that.
Speaker 1:Because, like the Quran is, you know if you're praying behind an imam and an imam makes a mistake, then several people in the audience can correct the imam because they've also memorized the Quran or memorized a section of the quran. So when you've got a blockchain, if someone tries to do a fraudulent transaction or tries to, you know, say that I'm moving my bitcoins for myself to a read, but it doesn't actually happen, then someone else is watching this whole thing. That's part of the verification process will come and say no, this is not the case and therefore this transaction should be taken forward. And the great thing about bitcoin is that over time, as more people get involved in the space, there's more miners in the sector. There's more people checking that, so the ability of someone malicious to come along and destroy the network becomes less and less. Now I remember back in like 10 years ago. Everyone said Bitcoin is a scam. Now it's like people. People are like Bitcoin is here to stay forever. Let's try and get ourselves involved in this, in this space.
Speaker 1:And actually what you tend to find is that when you get new sectors coming out, a lot of people are scared of it, like when you look at cars. When first cars came out, they were like newspaper journals putting out things that these are like death machines and they're dangerous, etc. Etc. But now we can't imagine our lives without cars, right? Similar thing with electricity, similar things with many technologies that change the world. So I think my advice to a lot of the muslim community is just be conscious of the fact that when something new comes to the space, a lot of the people are going to say that it's uh, you know it's bad, etc. Etc. When actually it's a lot of value in that thing, right?
Speaker 2:for sure, so just taking you back. Then you turned that two thousand dollars into how much in a few months about 12, 12, yeah, so in about three months.
Speaker 1:So you were 18 years old I was probably. Yeah, I was like 19 ish. Yes, it was, yeah, my first year of medical school. So it was good money back then.
Speaker 2:Wow, and at the time it seemed like you described okay, this is like my Zuckerberg moment, this is like my dot-com moment. Let me get into this. Was there like an Islamic angle at the time? Or were you quite young, still Like you were just really really into this, really kind of swept away by the technology, or were you also like Allah's, pushing me in this direction?
Speaker 1:so the reason I think that Allah put barakah in that thing is because my Islamic angle was that I was in university and obviously university, you know, has a lot of challenges in terms of, uh, you know, haram things coming and being and testing you. So I was like, let me fill my time with something that's uh, that's permissible. So I believe genuinely that's the reason that Allah put barakah in. What I did now was I thinking, oh, this can have a big impact on islamic finance and the muslim community. No, this is something that came later, but at the time my thing was like, let me fill my time with something, uh, that's as halal.
Speaker 2:So that's what happened essentially yeah, something that was halal and actually productive? Yeah, for sure. Um, so then how was it Cause you? You found yourself starting uni meds, uh, becoming a doctor $12,000 in your pocket. Was there some kind of like mental like confusion there with is this what you want to be doing? You're trying to build a business and you're trading, but at the same time, becoming a doctor like how were those worlds colliding?
Speaker 1:So for me it's like uh. You know, I wasn't too engaged with medicine, so it was like uh, and I was really fascinated by business. So, like when I made the talk 12 K I was like let me, okay, I made enough. And then what I did was I went and bought some Bitcoin back in the day uh, early stages and I said let me just hold it, just because I wanted to then focus on my study. But as entrepreneurs, you know, we always tend to come back to the business because we're like obsessed with it.
Speaker 1:And I was like I'd be sitting medical school exams and like think, trying to think of the medical school question, and the business would keep coming to my head. Yeah, because then I was like, okay, now I've done some arbitrage trading, let me find a sector that can have an impact on the crypto space. That's where the mining company came about. So one day I was like looking into mining hardware and I was like I couldn't find somewhere to buy it and host it. Most of the companies are based in China. And then something clicked. I was like, well, why don't I just build the first company that essentially is a service provider to build mining operations for people that want to get into the Bitcoin sector. Wow, so you were thinking B2B already.
Speaker 2:Not just let me build a personal mining company or get a machine for myself. Let me do this as like a data center for any other company. Pretty much I didn't even know what B2B meant back then, but now I do, alhamdulillah. So I was like.
Speaker 1:So I essentially found a manufacturer, found the clients I used to run Google Ads which converted really well, and then my first client. I still remember his name. I won't say his name, but he was an American.
Speaker 2:He bought 25k worth of machines and was he not like this is just a kid in the uk well, I didn't.
Speaker 1:The thing is when it was virtual, so I didn't I didn't tell him my age but there were certain situations like I met up with a large buyer.
Speaker 1:He was german. He flew to the uk to meet me, right, and he sits in the taxi. He looks at me. He goes how old are you? And I was like 20 at the time. I go 20 and then and then he's like, wow, you're very young. And you can see he's like in his eyes he's worried, right, and I said to him I remember saying to him I said to him I don't care about my age, I'm gonna do a better job than everyone else that you're speaking to. And in the end, alhamdulillah, I closed him, uh, as one of our clients. I think a lot of it is a sense of confidence.
Speaker 1:I think my confidence comes from the fact that you know uh, you know, I'm a muslim, believe that allah, you know, will described it once as god level accountability, right, like when you're when, when you're doing something, when you are doing it for the sake of allah, uh, it really puts a drive in you that's like greater than any other thing, for sure.
Speaker 2:Uh, so that's where my drive came from, I think I love that god level accountability uh I think more and more of our companies like abided by, that we wouldn't have such big trust issues in the muslim world. Yeah, um, okay, so I do want to move on. But it's also kind of blowing my mind that marshall, like such a young kid, was pioneering because this was the birth of new mine, right, that that company that went on I think, in your first year you made two million pounds and in revenue. Yeah that's what you did sales, yeah that was in 2016.
Speaker 1:When it was launched in 2017 office. Yeah, again.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go back to what did that feel like as such a young kid moving more wealth than the most people will see in their lifetimes, right in that way. Did it affect you in any way?
Speaker 1:you know, I think, uh, it's easy to say no, but I think it it did. I think that, you know, when you're given a lot very quickly, it can uh, it definitely has an effect on your ego. Uh, because it's uh, you know it's a big test, especially when you're young, we've all been 1920, like, yeah, like 1920, if you've got like 1000 pounds in your pocket, you feel like you're on the street, uh.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it does impact you and I learned a lot of lessons from that um. You know, alhamdulillah, allah gave me that at an early age because I was able to learn from and benefit from it when I'm older. Sometimes people don't get that lesson when they're 40, 50, so I do think it had an impact, but I do think that the lessons learned allowed me to come out better than than yeah, of course, everyone's on their journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, just again another quick definition check. What exactly is mining in the context of crypto? Because I think most people are thinking of like pickaxes and shovels when it comes to mining. So what does mining in a virtual world look like?
Speaker 1:Sure, so I'm focusing most of this. So, cryptocurrencies there's millions of different cryptocurrencies, but I'm focusing on Bitcoin right now because Bitcoin is the main one. It's 50% of the entire market cap of the whole space, right, and it's the pioneer in this space. So if I have my Bitcoin, let's say I've got, uh, you know, 0.1 of a bitcoin because you can own a fraction of a coin. You don't have to own an entire coin and I want to send it for myself to arib, right? So I'm going to send it from my wallet to your wallet.
Speaker 1:But we need to verify this transaction is not a fraudulent transaction, just like a bank would verify it, right. So the miners, what they do essentially is they, they run a lot of mathematical calculations to verify that I'm actually sending 0.1 of a Bitcoin from myself to Areeb and I'm not running some sort of fraudulent transaction. And this comes back to the blockchain aspect that once that transaction is verified as being legitimate, it's added to the blockchain and everyone can view that transaction went from wallet A, from wallet to wallet B. Now you might be asking okay, that means everyone knows that Ibrahim sent money to Areeb. But it doesn't work like that, because your address, in your bitcoin address. It's a set of digits and numbers. It's anonymous, right, so there are ways you can track it, but it's not so easy I guess that's where the crypto comes from in the crypt and cryptocurrency name cryptography.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah so.
Speaker 1:So that's the point of the miners. The miners are the kind of the foundation of this space, because they they stop uh bad actors ruining and destroying the space, essentially, but that's serious computing power and a lot of power required, so not just anyone can get into mining.
Speaker 2:I suppose it has to be that kind of enterprise level company that can buy up a data center just to do this.
Speaker 1:So in the early days you used to be able to mine Bitcoin on your computer machine, so anyone could have done it. Then it got more competitive. You had to buy these special machines called ASICs, which is essentially purpose-built to mine bitcoin, and then it got. You could basically run that in your home. But then it got so competitive that you had to be able to build a big data center and have cheap electricity and cheap machinery to compete.
Speaker 1:so now the sector uh, unfortunately is it's very dominated by a small number of players that have a lot of very deep pockets, right yeah now, if the average person tried to wanted to mine bitcoin, I'd say it's better for you to just buy it instead of mining it, because mining you have to buy the machine, you have to be able to set it up, you have to have cheap electricity. There's a lot of technical processes that go into that. Machines break, they need to be repaired, all sorts of things right. So if someone wants to dip their toes in the space and get exposure to it, it makes sense to just simply buy uh you know, bitcoin or ethereum or one of these larger cap coins, as opposed to trying to mine. It got it okay, understood.
Speaker 2:I'm going to skip to, I think, the meat of what people want to understand, which is more like a step-by-step guide for someone who wants to get into the space, and we've alluded to it already, so I we've touched on this already. People listening might be thinking it does feel like a little bit scammy still right, and I know that that's been proven not to be the case a lot of times. But for a lot of people, especially in our community, it takes them a long, long time to start adopting. What would you say to those people who have that worry? Still like, oh, this is never something I'm going to go into, so it's not financial advice, just my opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, none of this is investment advice.
Speaker 1:We're just gonna put that, yeah, so basically, you know, I would say that most of cryptos is still scammy, right, in the sense that, like, it's a new market, it's an emerging market, typically, like in a market with a lot of money that moves very quickly, is going to attract the greediest and type of people and most scammy type of people, right? So, uh, if you want to have some exposure to the space and let's say like, uh, you want to expose your meaning, you want to invest into it, then I would, uh, maybe stick to the larger cap coins by market cap. So Bitcoin, ethereum, solana, these bigger coins, right, crypto is very risky, but these are the least risky coins in the space. And maybe, like, say, you know, do a dollar cost averaging strategy, right? So let's say that you have your paycheck is $5,000 a month and you say 5% of that $250 I'm going to put into a basket of different cryptocurrencies every single month and you amass it over time.
Speaker 1:Now, the reality is, if you bought bitcoin at any stage since inception, since the coin was created and held for two years, you would have made money. The reason a lot of people lose money is because they try and trade in the middle, like the way that a lot of people try and trade, invest in crypto is insane. Like they don't even know what they're doing. It's like if you were to like uh, drive a car without taking driving lessons. Like, what do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 2:You're just going to you're going to crash.
Speaker 1:So like why do you think you can enter a financial?
Speaker 2:sector. I don't like you're in Riyadh, yeah.
Speaker 1:In Riyadh. I think they just start driving day one after they're born, right? So like you need to essentially be able to like learn what you're doing before entering.
Speaker 2:So I would say this strategy is probably the of um and inshallah has the lowest chance of you losing money, okay, okay. So dollar cost averaging in terms of actually buying crypto. What platforms can people use to do it? Because personally, I started only getting into it, um, and I know I'm going to seem like such like a normie uh to each doing it this way, but when uh revelete, introduced it into their app and it just brought down the barriers, made it like super simple and easy to get into. They don't have like a sharia screener, so watch the space in kestrel. We might be introducing that um, but you said it's quite expensive to go through something like revolute.
Speaker 2:I guess that's the trade-off. What would you say people should be?
Speaker 1:using. So, uh, it's expensive, but it's easy, right, so it's typically in life if you want convenience, you have to pay for it so revolute made it convenient for you, but they charge a higher trading fee, right?
Speaker 1:so there's a lot of different exchanges. Depends where you live in the world, so there's like the likes of coinbase, likes of binance, likes of kraken. So I would say, maybe go into chat, gpt, say, based on your location say, I live in this country. Uh, what are the best crypto exchanges for me to be able to buy crypto on? Then sign up to these exchanges. They usually have a verification process. You have to give them your passport and things like that and then, after that, you can start buying. And then I'll also recommend that, uh, not storing your assets for a long time on the exchange. Consider some sort of like hardware wallet a really more secure option.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, like we've seen a lot of hacks in the crypto space, right it's uh especially if someone, like if they click a malicious link or if they give if their password has has been leaked, things like that Like, uh, that's, the other aspect is, like, security of coins Cause a lot of scams, a lot of thefts in this space, unfortunately, so you've got to be really careful, uh, like where you're buying from, where you're holding assets, things like that.
Speaker 2:It's like a whole nother stolen all my Bitcoin. But you know it's not like it's real safe that someone's cracking. They're just hacking into it and it could all be lost. So basically, when you say like a physical thing to store it in, you're talking about like a hard drive or so there's different companies in crypto.
Speaker 1:We've got Ledger, we've got Trezor. They essentially build these hardware wallets that you essentially store the coins in a way where it's not stored quote unquote online, sure, so like it's like if you're, if you have a virus on your computer, then the this, this hardware wallet is going to safeguard your assets, essentially, right so, but that's. This is the thing that I was talking about before. The issue with crypto is like the user experience isn't great. Like if you, if you tell like the average 40 year old about Bitcoin, he's already confused.
Speaker 1:And then you tell him about Ethereum, he's more confused. Then you tell him about buying on exchange more confused. And you tell them about storing it in a hardware wallet more confused. So, like, when I sing to crypto people, I'm like to them. They talk about you know these things blockchain, web three, et cetera and I'm like no one cares about these things, like the typical person doesn't care what blockchain is they care about, like how, how easy is this thing to use and how does it give me value? How do I get money Exactly?
Speaker 1:So, like let, where one coin is pegged to one fiat currency, so one coin equals one dollar, for example, so I can essentially instantly move my dollars to you without needing to take several business days for a very low fee amount, right. So that's like stable coins is one of the best use cases that we've seen in crypto, right, and we've seen a lot of the banks now like building tech on Ethereum, looking to build stablecoins and things like that. So, basically, what's happening is over time, we're finding more and more use cases for cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 2:But the thing with stablecoins is, I understand how it can revolutionize the FX space, for sure, and bring down fees, but it does go away from the decentralized beauty of this thing in that now it's completely pegged to a fiat currency and the fiat currency is completely beholden to the whims of major governments and institutions who are storing these things right.
Speaker 1:Do you think it loses an aspect with it, or I think that it has a use case that's good enough to like be useful, right? Exactly so I think, like decentralization is and I think I know decentralization is great. The fact that Bitcoin is decentralized is fantastic, but not all crypto has to be bitcoin, right? So stable coins is a good use case that we can have. We've also got decentralized finance. It's a one of the best sectors, in my opinion, in crypto, it's essentially where we can have, like financial products, uh, being dealt with by smart contracts instead of banks. Like, let's say, we want to do a financial transaction between ourselves, right? So typically you'd have to, the bank would be like the middleman that oversees that, right? But but imagine you can have something, a special type of contract called a smart contract, and that smart contract would essentially verify the transaction happening between us, ensures that Ibrahim and Arif both do what they said they're going to do. That's something that I think can revolutionize the financial sector.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Muslim Money Talk. If you like what you've heard so far, you might be interested in checking out what we do at Kestrel, the Muslim money app. Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel because of how fed up I was at how poor Islamic financial services were in this country. Often people didn't use them because of how bad the user experience or customer service and indeed, how high in price they were. So Kestrel was the answer to that. If you download the Kestrel app today, it can help you by creating a budgeting plan. Plug in whatever bank account you have and it will create an auto budget just for you. You can then tell us what goals you're saving for, and we'll save towards them automatically into pots and then, crucially, link you towards sharia compliant investment and savings products as well. So download kestrel today and try it out for yourself.
Speaker 2:Now back to the podcast. Um, have you heard of takadao? No, so they're based in saudi. We had them on the on the podcast a few episodes ago. Check out, uh takadao with morad, with Murad and Shireen husband and wife team. So what they're doing is they're revolutionizing insurance and it's completely Sharia compliance. But the idea is that they create this DAO, which is like a circle of people depositing funds all on this network into one pot and then, whenever someone needs to draw down, the entire fund will empty into that person. Typically it's for life insurance, but that I see as a really interesting use case. But I don't think it's regulated. I think that's the one thing which is preventing it becoming quite mainstream. So I don't know, are you seeing use cases like that in the Islamic finance world? And it comes on to my next question is, I guess what do you think the impact is going to be on islamic finance as a whole of this industry?
Speaker 1:so, with regards to the first question, the regulators are an ongoing battle right so, uh, you know, with what we've seen recently with trump coming into power, he's a lot more crypto friendly yeah when biden was in power, it made building things in, you know, crypto products in america difficult, so people started leaving america.
Speaker 1:Crypto companies now crypto companies are thinking of going back to america. So, you know, we've got to comply with the law and we have to work with the regulators, but thankfully, what's happening is that the regulators are becoming more and more open to it. Right, you know, dubai is is trying to be a crypto hub, so it's putting laws in place and things in place to encourage people to come here, and you know, that's part of the reason why I came here. Like you know, half the crypto world is here. A lot of my friends are here. They're in crypto.
Speaker 1:So when you create that ecosystem of people in the same industry around each other, naturally over time you know things are going to come back of that. You know things are going to that uh with regards to the sharia space. So obviously we know that uh, interest is not allowed in our religion, right? So, uh, what the decentralized finance sector allows is essentially for anyone with an internet connection to build a financial product, uh, and then for anyone to use it that has internet access. So essentially, it opens up the banking system to the entire world where, like, uh, you know, someone in in the villages in pakistan and someone uh muslim in the states can have access to the same product and and partake in that financial system. So imagine you can build these products where, like, muslims all over the world have access to financial products. That's amazing right. It takes us, uh it really allows us to be, to be free to build and and have access to the financial markets absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You mentioned there's like the different tiers of cryptos. There's bitcoin, bitcoin and Ethereum, which seem pretty mainstream. Then you have what's called the altcoins and then, below that, I think, you have the meme coins. I think people often assume Doge is like a meme coin in that space. Are they all worthwhile, or are some you should stay away from completely, especially if you're new in this space?
Speaker 1:so I say that, uh, most crypto coins are garbage and you shouldn't even touch them with a 20 foot pole, so that doesn't hold back, yeah the reality is, like a lot of these cryptos, they a lot of these projects.
Speaker 1:They have a cryptocurrency and the project doesn't need the cryptocurrency to function yeah so the only reason the cryptocurrency exists is to enrich in the owners of that project, right, to make them richer. So there's different ways of thinking about the space, like bitcoin. The way I look at it is bitcoin is king, right, and everything else is an altcoin. So ethereum is also in that sector. So bitcoin is about 50 60 percent of the entire market cap, and then everything outside of that you've've got like big, like premium coins. When you consider Ethereum, solana coins like that, right, they've been around for a long time, they have a chart record, they have loads of people using them, and then, if you go down the list, you have different like people, different building like Ethereum competitors, solana competitors. You've got people building meme coins, people building. You've got people building meme coins. Yeah, people building decentralized finance coins, gaming coins, ai coins, gambling coins.
Speaker 1:Like there's all different sectors that people are trying to build coins in, but the reality is most of these coins, as I said before, they exist to enrich and the owners instead of providing value to that person, right?
Speaker 1:So that's why my advice to the people watching is like, if you're new to the space, like you shouldn't be even thinking about touching anything outside of like the top uh, five to ten coins by market cap, right, because, uh, those are risky. But when you go outside of that becomes very, very risky, and it's not unusual for coins and crypto to go down 90 percent overnight, uh. And if you know, 90 percent of people that invest in the stock market lose money, uh, and you know probably 98 97 percent of people that invest in crypto lose money, uh, because the people that have been in the industry for 10 years know what they're doing and they can. It's essentially financial markets. It's a it's a win and loss game in sense. Essentially, every time you win a trade, someone loses, right. So you've got to be conscious of that. Exercise caution whenever investing into a new market yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:Zero sum game. I saw a beautiful explanation of it where people said if bitcoin is like gold in the way that it's finite and you mine it and it has no like specific intrinsic value, aside from it's a good store of value itself feel free to disagree with me on that, but ethereum is more like oil and that I think a lot of the mining technology is built on ethereum, so it's kind of like that's the fuel which is powering this process, in this mining process yeah, so, yeah, to clarify.
Speaker 1:So I agree in that gold, um, bitcoin is the gold kind of analogy to store value. Ethereum is like oil, in that with oil you can fill your car, you can make plastic, like it has a lot of different use cases. So a lot of these different coins that are being built like altcoins are being built on ethereum right, because all it takes is a slight change of the code in ethereum to be able to build a that functions on Ethereum right, we call it an ERC20 token. It's essentially a token that functions in the Ethereum ecosystem. Solana has a similar thing, where people can build a token that functions in the Solana ecosystem.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to confuse the audience too much, but, like, the key thing to understand is different coins have different purposes and they're trying to build it. You know, solve a different problem or do a different thing, uh, and then a lot of other coins are just trying to make, make people richer. So, like it's like what do people want? Like, do people is it? Do they want to make money? Right, is it okay? Then you, you've got to think differently when you enter the market.
Speaker 1:There's someone that's trying to create value right uh, for me, I'm trying to do both right, so I believe the best way to make money is by creating value. So, uh, so, yeah, I think my general advice to the audience is like, before you go into the crypto sector is like, think like, what do I want is it? Do I want to make money or do I want to create value?
Speaker 2:because you have to go down a different road, understood, understood so there's this idea that bitcoin can be a form of currency, versus it could be a store of value. Do you think it could really be a currency? Because, like, for example, revolut, you can issue a card linked to all of your cryptos, not just Bitcoin, which you can just spend from? Do you think now it's moving towards being an actual currency or is it still too speculative? The price could swing too much for it to be seen that way.
Speaker 1:So it's a hard question because we've got to think of it. The thing is like the fiat currencies that we have today yeah, but it can be printed. It's not like the form of money quote-unquote money that you know that we have in our religion, right? So, like it's like it comes down to like, what is a currency? What is money? Like? The way I look at it is like bitcoin is a is an asset, right, it's a digital form of gold. And like I would rather hold Bitcoin than hold cash in the bank. Uh, and, as you said, there's cards that link your crypto to uh transactions, right? So like, uh, when you want to buy something, it converts your Bitcoin into the currency so you can pay for that coffee, et cetera. Right, uh, and because I believe that Bitcoin you know, I do believe that Bitcoin will hit a million dollars sooner or later I would rather hold Bitcoin than hold cash in the bank.
Speaker 2:Within our lifetime. Do you think Inshallah long enough?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think it could be within the next five to ten years, to be honest.
Speaker 2:So at the time of recording, Bitcoin is about 70,000 pounds.
Speaker 1:I don't do pounds, so $95,000.
Speaker 2:$95,000 right now um, okay, so that would be quite the jump. So you don't think it's going to plateau, or do you think it will plateau at around the 1 million eventually?
Speaker 1:I think it's. As long as we live in the same financial system, where money is being printed out of thin air, where you know government can print 30 of all the dollars in circulation in one year, like we saw in covid then, then bitcoin will just keep going up. Like what? Like how much is is? Is ten dollars nowadays anyway, like think about it when you were a kid. Right like when you go to the back, you go to like the store and with like one pound you buy half the shop right now. Now you can't even buy a chocolate with one pound. How much was a freddo?
Speaker 1:exactly right so, like, like, what is money like? It's being, like, devalued to a crazy amount. Not only is it being printed, but also you're being taxed and, like you know, the whole financial system that we live in is insane.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, we really like got something out of you there. We need to push that bus a little bit more, okay. So I know you don't like predictions, but you really believe that we'll get to 1 million. The other thing which a lot of the listeners it might hold them back is beyond. Is it real? Is it a scam? Is?
Speaker 1:it even.
Speaker 2:Sharia compliant or not. You're not a Sharia scholar, I know, but our own Sharia scholar, mufti Faraz, who's appeared on our podcast has deemed Bitcoin and certain other coins to be Sharia compliant. Do you know generally what goes into seeing whether a coin would be compliant or not?
Speaker 1:So I typically leave the fetters to the muftis, like Mufti Fares Adam, but I've got several muftis that I work with. Before I touch a coin, I send that to the mufti, I get an analysis, you know, is this permissible? And then, if it's permissible, then I touch it. The key thing to understand is, you know although that you know, mufti Ferraz takes the position Bitcoin is permissible, and so do a lot of other scholars it doesn't mean that every crypto is Every crypto is. Some cryptos involve gambling, some cryptos involve interest, things like that. So you've got to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Now there are certain resources online and maybe I can the description, uh, where people do a vetting of different coins and give you a fatwa. Uh, so you know, I would say refer, defer to the muftis.
Speaker 1:When I got into crypto, the first thing I did bitcoin. I was typing to google is bitcoin halal? And uh, a few things came up, a few articles by muftis, and I took these fatwas and these are the ones I ran with, because I was like, if I'm going to build something in a sector, then I want it to be permissible. But I think my advice to muslims is like don't, don't just jump and say everything's haram. Right, because there's certain things where people jump to. I said it was haram several years ago and then it turned out it wasn't necessarily haram and everyone's now we're behind in that sector. We lost out Exactly. So, like you know, look at things with right.
Speaker 1:So when I go to a mufti, you know I respect their knowledge, but I ask them can you explain what bitcoin is to me? Can you explain what ethereum is to me? Because if they can't do that, you know, how can I take a fatwa from you? If you can't explain to me what the technology is, how you're going to give a fatwa? So I look to see if they understand the tech, at least to a good level, before I would take a fatwa from them and I leave the religion aspect to them. Got it?
Speaker 2:understood, understood, okay, I think we've got a break for makar. Uh, now, are you okay to break now and then?
Speaker 1:absolutely. Yeah, it's important. We'll leave this bit inshallah, because, uh, you know, the most beloved act of allah is praying your salawat on time. So we'll pray maghrib inshallah, and then we'll keep recording.
Speaker 2:And this is kind of the end of the crypto section of it, because now we're going to go into more of the fun stuff, more of the islamic stuff, so it's a very good juncture to leave it at, so join us back in a little bit. So the real question is who's going? To be the imam it's got to be you, bro. It's got to be you. Let's go. We talked a lot. We talked a lot about crypto, what it could do in islamic finance a step-by-step guide for anyone who's looking to get into it um.
Speaker 2:So I think that was really, really useful. But I want to go now more towards like the dean part of what you do as an entrepreneur because, marshall, you're doing so much, not just from nia capital, where you're investing into is your thesis to look into islamic, specific type country companies?
Speaker 1:for nia. It's backing people building products in the muslim market or muslims. Okay. So when I wanted to, when I started Newmind, I tried to raise money. Uh, I bootstrapped the company in the end. Uh, and Alhamdulillah, I didn't raise it. It was the right thing for me. But I went to an investor and an angel investor he owned a syndicate, right he was. I told him about Newmind, what I wanted to build. You know, he said to me, from your yacht in a few years time, right?
Speaker 2:so I don't, I don't have a yacht.
Speaker 1:But what I do have is a strong passion to fix the lack of access to financing for muslim entrepreneurs. Right, because, like you, can be the smartest guy and have the best idea, but if you don't have that money, it'd be very difficult to build. So that's the intention behind near capital, that's the near Nia Capital very good, very good.
Speaker 2:You've said that before. Um, why did that investor say that to you? It was a good idea. You knew you were going to make money. What was it about it?
Speaker 1:it's probably because I was young and, uh, I didn't know how to pitch you. I was like, the first time I tried to pitch when I was like 18, 19, uh, you know, and uh, you know, I didn't convey it properly and it was probably too confusing, because he was like in his 40s. And yeah, I dropped him an email several years later, uh, because he said to me write to me when you make it. But, uh, but yeah, for me it's like a, you know, I was like young kid, young muslim kid, wanted to build something. I had a passion and I had a drive and I found no one to support me. Right, whether it was fine in terms of like financing the business, in terms of like the knowledge to build a business. Right, and that's what we're trying to do with this fund, inshallah.
Speaker 2:Did he get back to you when you he didn't, unfortunately. No, he didn't.
Speaker 1:I wish he did, but you know these investors probably get hundreds of emails yeah, yeah of course, of course.
Speaker 2:Just put it on the pile. I love the name of the funds as well. And of course, you also were part of the inspiration behind a friend of ours, shahnaz Nawaz, who's also been on the podcast him rebranding to Nia itself. So I guess Shahnaz fits the mold for the type of founder you're looking for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I was the first investor in Gaida so I backed him. I liked Shahnaz, I liked what he was doing and alhamdulillah they was doing and hamdulillah they're doing. Well, I think there was. They got into some legal stuff, so it used to be called a different name, yeah, and then they changed to dania and you know it is what it is. He actually messaged me beforehand I was like no worries man, go for it okay amazing, very good.
Speaker 2:So then, um, what advice do you have for people who want to increase their risk, because I feel like so many, especially young men, like hustle culture in the dean is really strong right now and I'm seeing all of these things, like this fudger habit made me do this, or waking up for the hudger. Does this, do you think and I saw this debate, I think, on on x or twitter the other day do you think, like there's this commercialization of the dean happening right now, where it's almost like we're putting more work into our deans so that we can gain something material, whereas it should be the other way around?
Speaker 1:So I think that there's definitely more and more Muslims wanting to make money. I think it's for a few reasons. I think people want to be free from the constraints of working a nine to five, because the reality is, if you have a nine to five, it's quite difficult to do a lot of abadah, because most of your time is taken working, right. I do believe that you know, the average muslim nowadays, uh, maybe has more of a desire for the world than they did before. You know, I never lived 300 years ago, but seems to be. We're going in that direction. People want more materialism on more objects and all these things. It doesn't make you happy, but we want it, right, uh. So I think that there's nothing wrong for muslims to have a drive, but you've got to put it. You've got to put all at the center of everything that you do, because anything can be an act of worship. This podcast is an act of worship. Our intention is to spread khair, right, uh? Eating is an act. That can be an act of worship if your intention is to nourish your body so you can worship allah better. Sleep can be an act of worship if your intention is to rest well so you can wake up and worship allah. So anything can be an act of worship, and I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to make money, as long as your intention is right.
Speaker 1:So you know, for me it's like the first piece of advice that I give entrepreneurs and people wanting to do business is you draw a big, fat, firm line between the halal and the haram and you don't cross into the haram boundary. There's a lot of fast money that can be made in this world. That's not halal, but it's not worth it because that's going to come. It's not going to have barakah in it, it's going to come with a lot of problems. Okay, maybe you'll have more money, but you have all these other health problems and family problems and friends problems and all these different things in your life that make your life miserable.
Speaker 1:There's some people I know that have a lot of money. Now, I've met people that you know they're billionaires, right, but like the their face, you wouldn't wish to be them for a single day, right? So you draw a fat line between the halal and haram. You keep your intentions pure for the sake of allah, and you always refresh, replenish your intentions, refresh your intentions, because the reality is like when someone comes and praises you right, your intention might be affected, so keep refreshing it to put all at the center of that intention I think that's really, really sound advice, whether you're an entrepreneur or just in your daily life.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people are listening to this and finding it really hard because I think, especially in the Western world, muslims tend to be on the lower end of the wealth scale, like a lot of Muslims are living in poverty or below the poverty line right now. What do you think it is that's keeping Muslims, especially in the West, surprisingly, like it might surprise some of the listeners I know people listen in from UAE and Pakistan, but not every Muslim in the Western world is doing very well, so you don't have to ask for gifts every time we visit Pakistan. Why do Muslims have a problem with money, do you think?
Speaker 1:I think we seem to have this belief that in order to be righteous, you have to be poor, which is exactly the opposite of what our religion says. Our religion says, actually, the best position to be in is to have knowledge and wealth right, and the hand that gives is better than the hand that takes. So our religion is actually encouraging us to have wealth, halal wealth, and spend it in a good way. And half of the Sahaba that were promised Jannah were wealthy businessmen. And the reality is, if it wasn't for the financing that they put forward right, it was fundamental to where islam needed to get to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam needed these wealthy, uh, businessmen around him to help finance the things that he needed to build for the muslim world.
Speaker 1:Uh, and you know, I had an analyst pull some data for me like eight billion muslims in the world sorry, eight billion people in the world two billion of them are muslim and two billion that's a quarter, right, they only control about around 5% of the world's wealth, so the disparity is massive. That's insane, right, it's insane. And you know, as you said, when you go to a lot of these Western countries, like a lot of the people working these harder jobs are typically Muslims, right, so for us, we've got to really like, push people to build halal money with the right intention, in order to and use that money for good, in order to improve the position of our ummah right. Like you know, even something small like to record this podcast today, it requires money, right, and we can't. You know, now, we're talking about Allah, we're talking about our religion, inshallah, people are getting an Iman boost, right, and that needed to be financed by money.
Speaker 2:Please subscribe, it does help us out. Because this is all free so you can do way more podcasts. Yeah, yeah, please, do it, please, please, please, and download kestrel. Check it out, um. So I wanted to talk about one of your other endeavors which is really really interesting wahi, which I think is uh, it's the world's first. How would you describe it? It's like an app for hadith. It's completely free, but it's like a third deal, but specifically for hadith learning bingo you might as well just come join the company.
Speaker 1:So, uh, it's like a tertiil, but specifically for hadith learning. Bingo, you might as well just come join the company. So, uh, it's not even a company, it's a non-profit. So, uh, you know our, as we know, our religion is based on two things the quran and the sunnah. The sunnah has been conveyed through the uh uh, this, uh, the sayings of the prophet, peace be upon him, which were passed down through the sahaba, and a chain, the best verification chain, uh, that we've ever had.
Speaker 1:You can also call it some form of blockchain, right? And this, if I was to describe Wahi very simply, it's a hadith memorization and application app, right? So I believe that we can fix a lot of the problems in the Muslim world by fixing our character right, and there's nothing heavier on your scale on the Day of Judgment than Khuluk al-Hasan, which is good character. So there's no better way to improve our character than to imitate the character of the Prophet. Peace be upon him and the teachings of the Prophet. Peace be upon him.
Speaker 1:So, wahee, the intention there is to convey these teachings to the world. Inshallah, and if people want to memorize the hadith in Arabic, they can, if they just want to learn the hadith in their language. Inshallah, we plan to put it in as many languages as we can. So, people, muslims, now, every single language spoken in the world, there's a muslim, there's a muslim, you know, that speaks that language. So we want to spread the teachings of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And, uh, you know my, my founders, in the app we, we decided to keep it completely free because, as I mentioned to you before, we want to even the playing playing field. You know, I believe the poor kid living in a village somewhere should have the same access to islamic resources as a kid in a private school in a wealthy country, right? So, uh, so, so, yeah, inshallah, we're a few weeks away from watching. So it's wahi w-a-h-i appcom.
Speaker 2:We'll puta link to the to the web. You guys have a website, so we do well soon, inshallah it took.
Speaker 1:It actually took quite a lot of time to develop because, uh, as you know, apps, million problems come up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we definitely know that.
Speaker 2:We definitely know that and I use it because, uh, only because of the feedback from the very loud feedback from, uh, some of our users. So, alhamdulillah, um, we're running to a little bit short on time, but I wanted to jump to do. You have a favorite story from the quran or something from the hadith that really inspires you? It could be due to to do with wealth or money, or it could just be in general you're talking about.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a good one, for about wealth, inshallah, is that we can look at two characters that I mentioned in the quran that had wealth. One used it to buy, essentially by his way to jannah, and one used it to buy his way to jannah, to the hellfire, right. So, uh, he was a king described, a very just king, right and he essentially used his wealth and power to travel around the world and spread Islam, so through that he was able to attain his place in Jannah. And then, if we look at Qarun, who was a man that was given a lot of wealth, he became so arrogant that he thought himself to be something far greater than he is and in the end he was swallowed by the ground Because of his arrogance, and his wealth couldn't save him. Or if we look at Faraun as well, faraun was given a huge amount of wealth and he thought himself to be he said, I am your lord most high. So that's the level of arrogance that he reached. And we all know the end that he suffered he drowned and his body's been preserved. For us to be reminded of this sort of man.
Speaker 1:So we see that the same thing all of these people had wealth, but some of them used it for to get their way into jannah. Some of them used to get their way into the hellfire. So it's very simple, that money is not the problem. The problem is what you do with the money. Right? I always tell people they say money is not the problem, it's what you do with the money. In fact, money is the best thing to have if you want to go to jannah because of the amount of khair that you can do. But it's I always like to say this right money without knowledge is dangerous because you know how to act with it, but knowledge without money is restrictive because you can't do the things that you want to do. So we want to combine the two for the biggest ultimate force, inshallah inshallah, inshallah.
Speaker 2:I think that's a beautiful way to end it. Very clippable as well, armor, so we can definitely use that. That'll be fantastic for the trailer. Ibrahim, thank you so much I really enjoyed it thank you for listening to the muslim money talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to muslim money talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really, really helps us out. Thank you, as-salamu alaykum, and see you next time.