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
Wealth Secrets From The Quran That Will Change How You Think About Money | Adil Hussain Ep 52
In this episode of Muslim Money Talk, host Areeb Siddiqui speaks with Adil Hussain from Islamic Finance Guru (IFG) about the powerful financial lessons found in the Quran and how they can guide Muslims in managing their money ethically. They explore stories from Surah Yusuf and Surah Kahf, the role of Bitcoin and Islamic finance today, and how Muslims can build generational wealth through tools like waqf, zakat, and halal investing.
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
02:17 – Adil’s background: From EY to Wahid to IFG
04:23 – Discovering Islamic finance as a young professional
08:17 – Early Islamic fintech players (Wahed, Yielders, etc.)
10:19 – Adil’s switch from data science to Islamic finance content
11:57 – Tips on creating viral, educational content
12:49 – Personal journey of discovering Quranic financial lessons
14:12 – Quran stories: The fisherman, two gardens, Musa (AS), Khidr (AS)
19:39 – Surah Kahf and the spiritual danger of wealth
21:53 – Arrogance and wealth: Lessons from Quranic figures
24:43 – Prophets with wealth (Sulaiman AS) vs simplicity (other stories)
27:49 – Story of the fishermen and divine protection of wealth
33:13 – Parenting, wealth, and spiritual inheritance
35:01 – Perpetual charity (waqf) and its modern impact
38:58 – Evergive, Bitcoin waqf, and endowments in Islamic history
42:02 – Bitcoin as an alternative monetary system
45:59 – Halal status of Bitcoin and critiques of fiat money
48:55 – The halal vs price debate in Islamic finance
50:37 – Pricing, funding, and halal savings/mortgage products
53:15 – Role of Islamic current accounts & financial conditioning
56:20 – Awareness as the main barrier to adoption
59:08 – Algorithms, Islamic content, and social media reach
01:00:15 – Wahed’s viral Mufti Menk campaign and media reactions
01:04:39 – Marketing, awareness, and IFG’s educational mission
01:06:52 – Final thoughts: competition, growth, and community responsibility
What lessons about money can we learn from the Quran?
Speaker 2:Alhamdulillah, the Quran has the best stories. It's said Yusuf. You know Prophet Yusuf, alayhi salam. When he became, you know the he was like the finance minister for Egypt at that time. Yeah, and he had a dream about. You know the hard times coming.
Speaker 2:So, for seven years. They saved, and it's a lesson there, which is when you're you know things are going well. Save for the hard times, because the hard times will come. What's amazing is we're learning the lessons the same way Musa alayhi salam learned them. Yeah, and if you think about Prophet Musa alayhi salam, like you know, he spoke to Allah. Allah spoke to him directly. That was his status, and now we're actually learning at the same time as him the same lessons Wow.
Speaker 1:Is is bitcoin halal, or is that even the right question to ask? I don't think that's the right question. I think that's the right question is like what is bitcoin and what is the nature of money? If halal chicken was more expensive than non-halal chicken, would we be having this debate about halal chicken? Would we be saying is it really halal? Would we be questioning it in the same way? I don't think so. If halal mortgages were cheaper than normal mortgages, I think everyone would just go for it.
Speaker 1:Before we begin, we notice only about 20% of you are subscribed to the podcast. So if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us, then please consider subscribing, liking, sharing or leaving us a comment or a review wherever you are listening to this, because it really does help people to find us. Thank you, and back to the show. In today's episode, I'm joined by Adil Hussain, who's a content manager over at the famous Islamic Finance Gurus, who are content generation machines, and we have the brains behind the operation with us here today. Before that, he was also doing a similar role over at Wahid, one of the largest Islamic focused robo advisors in the world, so he'll be sharing his experiences working for these two behemoths Crucially. He's also going to be talking about how he's found the Quran as his own personal financial advisor and how many lessons about money are embedded in the Quran. He's also extracted a lot of those lessons himself and put it into his own book called Rizq by Revelation 30 lessons from the Quran on money.
Speaker 1:As always, I am your host, areeb Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk. Adil assalamu alaikum and welcome to the show. Waalaikumsalam, thanks for having me. You're the first person from the IFG universe to actually enter the Muslim Money Talk arena. I'll take that.
Speaker 1:So welcome. You made it here before Ibrahim or Mohsen. I'll let him know that. Okay, good, how are you doing, man? You've?
Speaker 2:come all the way from leeds today. Yeah, so I live in leeds, so I come down twice a month, uh, to work in the offices. Yeah, I'm like so. I used to live in london, so I'm quite familiar with the the trek okay, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1:If you think your commute was bad, I literally just came here from the airport. No, so I was in karachi 13 hours ago and then via. Dubai, and I think you can see my suitcase in the background. No, you can't anymore, but yeah. So I hope I'm not appearing like way too jet lagged on camera, but maybe you can tell. No, I didn't even notice, okay alhamdulillah, there you go there you go, I'll take it, I'll take it.
Speaker 1:But there you go, I'll take it, I'll take it. But yeah, there's a lot I want to talk to you about and I think, as soon as I saw that announcement on LinkedIn, that post where you said you'd compile all these lessons into a book, which is now available, we'll put the link through the IFG website. Really love to get you on. But before all of that, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked most of my guests at the beginning, which is did you ever imagine you'd be doing this when you were a kid?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not. I've actually changed careers many times, really. So I started as a consultant working for EY, so a big four firm similar to yourself. I left that job, became a data scientist, so I was working in tech and then, whilst I was doing that, um, I actually started writing about some of my as a freelancer. So I was doing it on the weekends, but my day job was data science. What drew you to islamic finance? It was, you know, 21 in the city, you know, earning money for the first time yeah it's like, okay, what, what now?
Speaker 2:how do I actually spend money the way that allah wants me to right, I think how most people actually discover. It's like you start making money and it's like, okay, well, what now? And everyone's talking about investments and like savings account, etc. Where do I put my money? Yeah, like, up until that point, I only ever had a bank account. Okay, so, so what now? And and I wasn't sure in some terms, of my career, I don't know what I wanted to do and I was still trying to find that out. And then I saw Islamic finance and learning about that, that opened, that became like an option for me. Okay, can I, like you know, go from finance to Islamic finance and let me learn about it, just obviously for myself.
Speaker 1:Did you talk to your parents about it or people in your community? What did they have to say about?
Speaker 2:it? No, I think the challenge as well is like so, growing up in the area that I did so my dad's a taxi driver and most people are like in sort of semi-skills slash manual labor jobs.
Speaker 2:You can't really speak to them about corporate careers. All they know is accountancy, engineering, doctor, lawyer, and it can be very difficult growing up with that if you don't fit into one of those boxes just trying to figure out what to do. So I never really felt like I had people to ask in terms of what I should do, as more trial and error, I guess when you started working, were you in london?
Speaker 1:I was in london. Yes, canary wharf, okay, so you moved out for the first time as well, you were paying rent so managing money was like a really big deal at the time
Speaker 2:yeah, I had a an app. So I downloaded an app. I was tracking all my expenses. Uh, it was. It was quite manual actually. I was entering every transaction. Oh, it can't have been kestrel.
Speaker 2:Then now, honestly, now it's amazing you have so many like ultimate solutions, you know, like kestrel, etc. But back then I was literally tracking everything. I was putting it in an app. So I was trying to save each month because, obviously, rent in london and, like you know, trying to save money. But I'm, like you learn a lot and I actually think it's very sound financial practice to track your expenses. It's very similar to what I see is to tracking calories. If you're trying to, you know, manage your weight or like put muscle on or lose fat, without actually tracking what you're doing, then you're kind of flying blind and like, especially if you're talking about weight loss, like if you don't track your calories, you're almost not going to achieve your goals because you don't actually know where you are. Same with your finances, like you have to track them. So that was my sort of initial, you know, finance sort of journey just tracking my money, trying to save. Then it's a question of what next next fight and is that when you found?
Speaker 2:yourself at wahid, at wahid. Yeah, I know this is a long time after oh, okay, I think wahid came uh, maybe six years, seven years after is that when we first met?
Speaker 1:because we met almost exactly a year ago I think it was the day before you started, just after the day I uh, just the day after I left wahid and the day I started. Okay, yeah, yeah, because I saw the announcement I'm leaving wahid and then I was like, let's go out for lunch, let's have a chat. And then you were like, yeah, so tomorrow's my first day at ifg, yeah do you remember? I think we were at westfield stratford yeah, I remember that yeah yeah, okay, yeah, nice okay, nice.
Speaker 1:So how was it so you were working in data science? At ey uh, no I was a management consultant. Okay, so I left ui actually uh, because I wasn't quite so.
Speaker 2:you were working in data science at EY. No, I was a management consultant. So I left EY, actually because I wasn't quite happy working there. I felt like I lacked purpose in terms of what I was doing. I felt like I was a very small part of a very large machine. So I wanted to try something else. So I actually quit without actually knowing what to do next. And then it was a period of self-discovery, trying to figure out what am I good at, how can I add value? And at this point I was actually discovering Islamic finance. I was doing my CIMA diploma in Islamic finance. Oh yeah, because whilst you're at these big four firms, they actually make you do a qualification. Yes, and I was doing the management accountant one with CIMA. But once I I saw that they had an Islamic finance one. So I figured that's a natural next step. So at this time I'm learning about it. And then my intention was to eventually go to Islamic finance. But it was a case of what do I have to offer to the industry?
Speaker 1:What was the scene like in Islamic finance at the time? What year are we talking about?
Speaker 2:2018, late 2018. So like start of 2019. So I guess the big players then were Al-Rayan Al-Rayan. So I guess the big players then were Al Ryan. Like Al Ryan, I remember looking at them quite closely.
Speaker 1:I think IFG were a blog. Ifg was still a blog.
Speaker 2:I think Wahid had just announced Wahid was like yeah, I think I probably invested in Wahid at that point. Yildiz were around, yildiz yes.
Speaker 1:Yildiz was actually the first Islamic fintech in the UK. Technically, and technically yeah, uh, and they're back.
Speaker 2:They've just been bought out by summer yes, yes, I saw the new uh, the ceo muslim tech fest. Yes, that's right, that's right he was there at muslim tech fest.
Speaker 1:We're gonna have to get them on, yeah, as well. So, yeah, yielders for people who don't know where, and are a way that you can crowd invest into, into properties, um, so similar to other solutions that have come up since then the fathers, the nesters of the world, but they were like one of the first ones to actually do it, and now they're back um, okay, fine, so this is very, very early days so you were finding your way, and that's when you went into data science, but you were also doing islamic finance on the side yeah, so some.
Speaker 2:So my uh sort of thought process was I want to go into some finance, but I want to take a trade with me and I had a maths background, so, like, data science was like a natural sort of you know, application of that and the industry wasn't quite mature for, you know, to have data scientists.
Speaker 2:I think you probably are one of the few climate finance companies that actually have data scientists, but it's more of you. Let me train myself as a data scientist and eventually let me become one of the first people working in data science for an assignment finance firm. But, alhamdulillah, what actually happened is I got the opportunity to write well before that plan, whilst I was, you know, being a data scientist, a friend of mine who was writing for fg. He knew I was, you know, studying and researching the area. That I knew, I knew the industry quite well and he approached me saying, you know, I need someone to help write articles. Would you be interested? And then I met with ibrahim, interviewed, gave him a few sample articles and then, yeah, alhamdulillah, from then just uh, kicked on really and discovered, like, I guess, my dream career, without actually ever knowing that was my dream career so this was the dream, basically, without do you ever miss data science and what you're doing.
Speaker 2:No, uh do you feel like you're making more of an impact with content creation that's the main reason why I switch, because, um, I don't think there are that many sort of people in the summit finals focus on. I feel like you're making more of an impact with content creation, 100%. That's the main reason why I switched, because I don't think there are that many people in the Simon Finance focus on the education side. I think there's a lot more so on the products In terms of actually education, which I think is probably like half of the problems, like you know, helping people, I felt like there was probably a lack of people there in terms of actually educating.
Speaker 2:Obviously, it's very difficult when you're building a company to also, like you know, go and educate. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what we're trying to do with this podcast ifg also do amazing content.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite content creators in the space right now is khizr um khizr muhammad, who, yes, used to be at ifg. Now he's over at nest, so we had him on a few weeks ago, but he's killing it on t, like his videos are incredible because Mashallah he brings the Sharia scholar side along with some of the Islamic finance knowledge, and then talks about random topics as well, everything from fatwas on women wearing makeup out of the house to Islamic mortgages, to everything in between.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, he's got a nice mix of, like, classically trained but also, like you know, practitioner, you understand, like the modern context and obviously was at ifg for many years, yes, and now at nesta. So, yeah, much like very well placed. It's very digestible content, very digestible content.
Speaker 1:Okay, fine, so before we get into the lessons from the quran, what are your pro tips on content creation and and what does well like? For something let's say it's a, it's a, it's a short a 60 second short what are the main things that you're trying to do to get something that has the elements of virality but is also educational?
Speaker 2:yeah, content is very simple. Uh, there's two things. Number one is the hook, so actually getting people to watch or read, and then number two is the value, and if you can master that and it's slightly different based on the platform, but all you need is the hook get people interested and then to actually give them value, and then that's all you need. What do you think the hook should be for this video?
Speaker 2:the hook should be for this video. It should be um wealth secrets from the quran. How, um, uh. It should be wealth secrets from the Quran. How. It should be wealth secrets from the Quran.
Speaker 1:That will change how you think about money, okay and is that obviously we're going to get into it but is that? How it really happened for you that you went to the Quran specifically and you began to see there's a lot of things about wealth and how wealth should be distributed, not just through Sadaqah and Zakat, but also how it should be spent and passages on riba. Is that how it actually went for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so. So uh, you're talking about the inception of the book itself, or do you mean in general?
Speaker 2:your own journey, yeah, into islamic finance yes, yes, so it was a mixture of, you know, reading the quran and like the stories, which we'll get into, but also actually just online researching. Like you know, I want to save his account, can I have a credit card? If I want to buy a house, what options do I have? If I want to invest, my money is more, I guess, practical in terms of what can I do right now, because I had many friends, non-muslims, that were investing, that were talking about these things, and I was like I don't know what I can do as a muslim, and that's what sparked the initial interest. And then from then it's you know, actually what's the Quran have to say and like the Hadith actually there's so many lessons from the Hadith that you can take and then also just online, just more contemporary stuff, researching and trying to apply you know, the rulings and building of the few that actually writing about.
Speaker 1:They were the pioneers of it, to be honest in this country. I mean there were people doing it, but they did it at a mass level and, to be honest, they were. My first real way into Islamic finance was reading those initial articles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I was working at Deloitte, I was studying at Cambridge and just listening to what they were and seeing what they were doing. That, plus Haris Rafan's book Heaven's Bank those two things, because that came out, I think, 2016. Yeah, so those two things together were really my first introduction to.
Speaker 2:Islamic finance in some way. Yeah, I read that exact book. Actually, I remember it being near the offices in the library. I just have a flashback now of me being there trying to read in that book. But yeah, that was one of the first ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nice, nice. So, um, before we get into it, I just want to ask you wahid versus ifg, what did you enjoy more? I know you have to say ifg now no, it's, it's different teams, their mission.
Speaker 2:So the mission is, you know, helping muslims, uh, giving them products, and, you know, trying to get muslims away from riba and towards the halal. So, alhamdulillah, I loved it. I had very different experiences, waheed. I was doing both content and also data, so I had like a dual role because at that point I didn't want to leave the data side behind. So I was in different teams and working different people. But also it's quite different in terms of what I hit. It's much bigger. I think it's 150 to 200 employees, whereas IFG slash career it was around 30 when I joined. It's a very close, small-knit team and I was focused fully on content. So different experiences, but I have good things to say and they're doing different things, but the mission is the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just saying they're two of the biggest players in the space, so it's quite unique. There's not too many people out there who have that kind of dual experience of both, alhamdulillah. Yeah, how do you feel about islamic finance in this country? Because I think a lot of people feel like it's still in the early stages. Some people say it's a lot more advanced. But you've worked at two of the players, you've seen everything come up.
Speaker 2:How do you feel we are at the moment, alhamdulillah, when I first started working in 2016 To now, there's so many options. There's Enough for us To be quite proud about, and I actually Joined Muslim Tech Fest and in general, when I speak to people From other countries, they always look at us and say you guys have so much.
Speaker 1:That's it Exactly. I know when you speak to the French Muslims. As well, especially, and they're just like you have it, or we want to be where you were, like 10, 20 years ago and subhanallah. Like I feel like we don't appreciate that at all. Like people are constantly complaining and saying, oh you know, it's so expensive. And we can't trust it. But literally mainland european muslims would would love to be where we were.
Speaker 2:That decades ago. Even america to an extent and, like I know, like there's a lot of jokes between american and like uk muslims. But, like you know, halal food, like plentiful mosques and we can pray, like conditions in this country for like muslims, yeah, compared to many other, like you know, non-muslim countries, yeah, are extremely favorable. Alhamdulillah sure?
Speaker 1:um, okay, let's get into it, man. So money lessons from the quran yeah let's talk about it. What are those lessons? You've just filled 30 of them in your book. I'd love to hear about some of the highlights, some of the main ones that you wanted. What lessons about money can we learn from the Quran?
Speaker 2:yeah, just to give a bit of context, it started as a Ramadan series, so like it's a bit taking some inspiration from Yaqeen, from yakin, oh yeah, daily series.
Speaker 1:Oh so it was like a daily newsletter.
Speaker 2:It was initially a daily email series joined just from an hour just gone and it was, you know, it's the moment of the quran. How can we help people, you know, connect to the quran but also, like you know, we're on the finance side help them learn about money and make it short, bite size, but also practical? So that was the intention and, alhamdulillah, the reception was amazing, like the feedback and people emailing me and messaging me and saying, like you know, they were loving it. It's bite-sized, and I sent a feedback form out and someone actually said this is just like Yaqeen, but the email version.
Speaker 2:So it's like validation of, like what the original idea was. And, yeah, and as Muslims, we believe that Islam is a complete system of guidance. We don't compartmentalize between different areas, like Islam is here and this is here, which I think many other groups do. So obviously Islam has something to say about money. What is that? And there's no better place to turn to than the Quran. And if you think about the Quran, there's like two forms, really that we have the rules. So I think everyone knows that. You know riba bad. I mean, we know the butter verse, where you know a lot talks about a war against alana's messenger if you consume riba. We know about the verses on contracts you have to write things down inheritance.
Speaker 2:Well, actually, there are some really powerful stories and I think stories are like the best way to you know, learn lessons. You know for the everyday person that we connect to right. Look at the entertainment industry how big it is movies, hollywood, etc. Stories are like king. Alhamdulillah, the quran has the best stories like sud yusuf is, you know, one of the best stories. And even sud yusuf has you know many lessons. Uh, in the prophet yusuf alayhi sallam, uh, when he became, you know, the the chief. I guess I don't want to say economist, but like he was sort of the chief, yeah he was like the finance minister for Egypt at that time and he had the dream about.
Speaker 2:You know the hard times coming so for seven years they saved and then, when the drought came, for seven years they had enough reserves where they could, you know, live out of their reserves. And then after that, but Allah's relief came, and it's a lesson there, which is, when things are going well, save for the hard times, because the hard times will come. But, when you're in the hard times, remember the good times will come, allah's relief will come.
Speaker 1:It was almost like an emergency fund, just on a national level.
Speaker 2:Emergency fund savings. An emergency fund is just a pot of money for emergencies that happen, that you don't touch and you keep aside exactly yeah, in case you lose your job or there's some huge unexpected expense, then that's what that was. So you can't be saying that was probably one of the first ever large-scale emergency funds that have been written about. I guess yeah yeah, for sure okay, wow.
Speaker 1:So just from surah yusuf we can, we can distill that. Um, everyone talks about surah kaf. Such girl, yeah.
Speaker 1:And in surah kaf it's famous for having four stories and the way that it was described to me is that there were four, four lessons or for about four different tests. The people of the cave were tested by their faith, the people of the, the two, the two gardens the story of the two gardens, their wealth is being tested. The story about Hazrat Musa, alayhi salam and Khidr is a test of knowledge and finally, you've got the story of Zul Qarnayn and Yuzhah Majuzh, and that's a test of power and how power shouldn't corrupt you.
Speaker 1:Are we just talking about one of those stories or is this stories about money from all four?
Speaker 2:Multiple. So the second one of those stories, or is this, is this stories about money from from all four? Uh, multiple, so um, the second story, so um, the story of the man with the two gardens. So there were two men and one man had two gardens and, amazing, you know, lush with crops, flowing rivers, like the best gardens you can think of, um, but the problem was, it made him very arrogant, very prideful, and he used to, you know, walk in and say you know, like I can't imagine anything to be better than this.
Speaker 2:Like you know, he said this line about you know something about the next life in danger of not coming. And then his companion sort of rebuked him, saying like you know, you shouldn't be saying that, like what are you doing? And then Allah punished him and destroyed his gardens and he said, oh well, and he's like you know what have I done? And his companion said to him if only you had said um mashallah, like, this is what Allah has willed, there's no power except Allah. And then the lesson there is like when you're feeling prideful of sort of something you know, I've earned this money, I've done this, remember, like you know, it's what Allah has willed and there's no power except Allah. Otherwise, what happened to that man with the two gardens may?
Speaker 1:happen to you, of course, subhanallah. And financial ruin is such a common thing that we see time and time again. We see that through all the different boom and bust cycles, from one of the early Wall Street crashes, where people lost all their money and were literally throwing themselves off of buildings at the time, to crypto bubbles now, where people are just putting all their money into meme coins, their life savings, and losing all of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and look what we see now on Instagram and TikTok when people have money, they like to show it, they get very excited. This is what I've done. This is my hard work. I want to celebrate.
Speaker 2:I'm almost bordering on like the same sort of emotions and like behaviors as that man with the two gardens and become very boastful, and I think they think money can't touch them. And then you get. You get all these like powerful figures that you know make it, make a lot of money, and then they start behaving a certain way. I won't name specifics, but you know we all know of, like, you know these big people, um, you know, like footballers, celebrities, politicians, and their power blinds them. But you know, from that story, in that lesson we learn, you know one your wealth is a test, like the.
Speaker 2:There was that man with the two gardens, but there's another man who didn't actually have much. He didn't have that test, so in a way, you could argue it was easier for him. He didn't have that fit down right, whereas we think, you know, having wealth is always the good thing, but there's responsibility and I feel that, especially as Western Muslims like we're, even if we're not, you know, of the top 10% in the UK or where we are in the West. Compared to Muslims everywhere else, we're in the top 10% of the world. Yeah for sure, and like and for them, their test is a lot more simpler. They don't have. You know the fitna that comes with money. It's just, you know, we don't have much money we need to live by, we need to be patient, whereas for us we're making money and you know we have access to cars. You know nice food, food over cars, nice food, overconsumption of food, clothing, holidays, houses, et cetera.
Speaker 1:But we're being tested. It makes us forget what this is actually all about and where we're headed to next.
Speaker 1:But I really wanted to hone in on this point because I talked about this with Niaz Azad from Millennial Money and a few other people talked about this with with niyaz azad from millennial money and a few other people that muslims often struggle with when talking about faith and finances. They think that you can't have one with the other and that being poor is equivalent to being pious in some way. And when we hear stories like that, sometimes we think that that okay, I should be forgoing my wealth and we should live a simple existence free from all of that.
Speaker 1:But then, at the same time, you hear stories again from the Quran of Hazrat Sulaiman alayhi as-salam and how much wealth and how much kingdom that he acquired, to the point where his famous dua was that, oh Allah, please grant me more kingdom, a kingdom that would not. It would be inappropriate for anyone else who came after me, which sounds at the beginning a little bit strange because it seems like he's asking for dunya. You know, a prophet of god asking for something in this life as opposed to the next. Um, but yeah, do you want to?
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's one of your 30 lessons, but uh, it's not actually, but, um, you reminded me of this white paper that ibrahim, who's the one of the co-founders of ifg road, is it wrong to be rich in islam? And he was talking about, you know, prophet suleiman, alayhi Salaam, and you know why he made that dua, and what he was saying Was, like, some people are suited To having money, but, as an art, some people can actually Handle the fitna that comes with money. We have, like Abdul Rahman and who you know, one of the richest men Alive, and he gave so much Of it away. He was so good at making money but he gave so much of it away. And, uh, I think there was one story of like um, where he had a absolutely huge caravan coming in and he had like a reminder of, like you know, having money and he just donated it all like within an instant.
Speaker 2:Wow, and like um. So I think there's some truth there isn't? Like some people, their psyche supports them being able to have money, whereas for others it's actually probably better, not because you know it leads them the wrong way. And then therein I guess, there is wisdom of like you know why allah gives certain people money and some people not. Maybe the reason you don't have money is because allah knows that if you were to have money, it would lead you down the wrong path but is there a way you can train yourself?
Speaker 1:is there a way that we can train ourselves to almost like a prophetic mindset of dealing with wealth and how we see it as that responsibility instead of it being a test to us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so obviously, as Muslims like we're, every day, five times a day, we pray, yeah, we read Sufati, how we make, you know the Dua for guidance, and that is a way of training ourselves, right? But I guess beyond that is actually reminding yourself of the verses of the Quran, of what Islam has to say about money, around centering yourself, and I think the antidote is Zakat and Sadaqah is giving money, training yourself to give money. And Zakat obviously, naturally, is a way of taking money and making sure that you always remember that you have to give it. But also Sadaqah, give money away, and actually you find that that actually ends up giving you more money. So handle.
Speaker 1:Those are things that can be done, but, yeah, so it's part of the wisdom behind sadhqa and zakat, which I mentioned throughout the Quran there's a card being the banditry almost a welfare tax that we paid 2.5% for a sadhqa is more. You know more giving to charity voluntarily as and when you wish. Do you think that's part of the wisdom behind it? I?
Speaker 2:think so. Yeah, in the book we talk about often prayer and sadhaka is mentioned together prayer and charity and we ask the question why do you think they're mentioned together? And going through the book there, there's lots, lots of uh wisdom there, and then also actually in the story of um. So, going back to sudgaf of musa alayhi salam, when he was uh with kidder alayhi salam and he was learning from him, you know the knowledge that kidder had that musa alayhi salam didn't have. And and one of the stories that that I love, that I always think about, is when they were on their journey and they came across a group of poor fishermen who agreed to host them. You know, give them passage. And they gave them passage. And then at the end of the trip, qidr al-Islam, he damaged the boat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he broke. So basically they had to cross a lake or some sea and the fishermen allowed them onto their ship. And then, when they got off of the ship, he just starts making holes in the boat.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, can you imagine the fishermen? They were like we help these people.
Speaker 1:What are you doing?
Speaker 2:We don't have money and we're just helping. And I was like looking at Allah, thinking what's going on? We're helping them, we've been punished for it. And then later on in the story, we actually learned that there was a tyrant king that was going around seizing all the boats and he didn't seize their boat because it was damaged. And then at that point I realized, oh, that's why he did it. At the time we didn't understand the wisdom. But now we get it and like, and the lessons there are number one, like we don't have the full picture. What we think is a calamity might actually be protecting us from something greater. So that full wisdom, so having tawakkul, but also I was reading the seerah book the stuff seerah book actually and the lesson there is their possession was their boat and they used it in the path of Allah and Allah protected it. So if you want to protect your wealth, use it in the path of Allah, use it in the path of Allah. They use their boat to help people, if you have money.
Speaker 2:Give some loans interest free. Your money is, you know you're helping people and Allah actually promises. Like who will lend Allah, you know a goodly loan hey, assalamualaikum.
Speaker 1:Before we continue, I really wanted to share a little bit about what Kestrel is and what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Kestrel is and what we're doing. Kestrel is a fintech on a mission to help over a billion people to grow their wealth without compromising on their beliefs, and we're doing that by launching our very own digital bank later this year here in the UK. So if you'd like to sign up and become one of our first 1,000 customers who get free access to all of our services for life, please sign up through the link wherever you're listening to this podcast. Free access for life means access to features such as our Sharia-compliant current account savings products, investing into the likes of gold, crypto stocks and shares. All of these features and more, but we're only making it available to the first thousand customers, so please check this out. It's not just about avoiding interest. It's about ensuring that our money is being used to do good in the world and not for all the things that banks are putting it towards, whether it's funding wars in the Middle East, pollution, housing crisis, what have you? So please sign up to Kestrel today. Thank you. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:What I love about that story? Just for people who don't know the backstory of. It is the third story within surah al-qa'a and it talks about musa alayhi salam, who at the time was widely considered to be one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet. He was the prophet at the time. He would speak with allah directly, would converse with them, and this was during the period where he was leaving the Bani Israel out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. And a lot of stuff happened during that period and Allah sent Khidr al-Islam to Musa al-Islam as almost like a test to show that you don't know everything. There are certain things which are only privy to the world of the unseen, and things which only Allah ordains.
Speaker 1:So, certain things happen on this, privy to the world of the unseen and things which are only Allah ordained. So certain things happen on this adventure, whilst the two of them are traveling together, which Musa alayhi salam just doesn't understand, and the destruction of the boats is one of those, and a few other things. So I do encourage people to check it out.
Speaker 2:What's amazing is we're learning the lessons the same way Musa alayhi salam learned them. Yeah, and if you think of Prophet Musa Alayhi Salaam, like you know, he spoke to Allah. Allah spoke to him directly. That was his status, and now we're actually learning at the same time as him the same lessons and like what more can you want? Like we're learning? The same way the Prophet was taught and he was taught through those lessons that are now in the Quran. So the best financial guide is the Quran.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite story about money within the Quran or the Hadith?
Speaker 2:It was actually the fisherman.
Speaker 1:It's the fisherman one. Okay, what's your second favorite?
Speaker 2:one. Another good one actually is in the same sort of tale of Musa Alayhi Salaam. They go to this town and at the time customary when you go to a town as a guest they're meant to host you, you know, give you accommodation, give you some water, give you food. The inhabitants actually gave them nothing and Musa Alayhi Salaam was, like you know, frustrated. And then Qidr Alayhi Salaam goes away and he repairs this wall that was about to break and Musa alayhi salam Was like why have you done that? Like we could have Taken payment and we could have, you know, got some food and some drink For ourselves.
Speaker 2:And then Ghidr alayhi salam Eventually says it's because that wall, underneath that wall, was a treasure Belonging to two orphans and their father Was righteous and Allah willed that when they became, you know, as a mercy from him. And the amazing lesson there is how Allah has protected, you know, the wealth of these kids, of these orphans, through their father. And we talked about, like, as I know you're a father and I'm a father, and we wanted to provide and like leave money behind, and we think about nowadays in terms of saving his account and investing for them. But what this man was his, his investment was him being righteous, and by being being righteous, allah facilitated that his kids would be looked after, subhanallah, well, and yeah, it's quite a strong lesson for me becoming a father, and recently you became a father, right, uh, yeah alhamdulillah, uh, my son's nearly two.
Speaker 1:It's very fresh yeah okay, wow, did that really change the way you thought about money?
Speaker 2:I imagine it did alhamdulillah, um, what is what's interesting actually, in siddh ghaffi talks. It talks about um, wealth and children are adornment of the world, and you know what really, you know what's really everlasting is your good deeds. And I've been thinking recently about why is wealth and children mentioned together? Right, because your children, your children, it's fine to love. But should you love your wealth and I'm just thinking really into some of when I look at my son I appreciate that verse of you know, like, ultimately it's your deeds.
Speaker 1:It's not your kids.
Speaker 2:It's not your money. I think that's that appreciation and that switch that I've had since having him. I think that's that appreciation and that switch that I've had since having him.
Speaker 2:We're also remembering that lesson of being more righteous and not just opening up a junior IC account which in the UK is a fairly good way to invest for your kid's future but also, more importantly, me as a person and the example that I'm setting him and then actually just teaching him financial literacy, teaching about money, but also what the Quran has to say about money.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't feel like we had that growing up?
Speaker 1:No, not at all. No, not at all. I think the emphasis was certainly on like memorizing certain surahs and certain lessons, but definitely not about money. And I think you're right. It's a generational thing. Many of our parents came here and they were in a different phase of their lives and a different mindset. It was all about education, education, education. Become a doctor, engineer, lawyer, and then you'll worry about it later because your mind is set, but the world's a different place now. But just going back to that, children and wealth are a dormance for you. I think it's also because and I might be wrong in this, but both children and wealth can serve as sadhaka ajarya for you long after you're gone and creating reward for you one of the three things that remain after you die is a righteous child that makes dua for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like beneficial knowledge, and then also the continuous charity yes, but a righteous child that makes dua for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah let's talk about that continuous charity and the idea of the walk right because, I was amazed to learn quite recently. I knew about the first walk, for now it was created by utman ibn afan and when, when the muslims had done hijra to medina and they set up the.
Speaker 1:well, I've talked about this a lot on this show, so I don't know if the listeners want to listen to it again, but I didn't realize that that wealth, which still exists today and I think, is like, I think it's the most profitable investments of all time, perhaps, perhaps historically, it must be. I can't imagine anything more than 1,400 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 1,400 years.
Speaker 1:It's still lasting, it's all going to this day. Yeah, I didn't realize that it had funded the actual clock towers development in Makkah.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, there is a hotel in Medina that's named in honor of Mahmoud Jilani. Yeah, it's not actually linked to him, it's just more. I think the people that established that work Right, they did it in his name, but also, I think, the clock tower so Hamzullah did hajj last year.
Speaker 2:The actual clock tower complex is a work to maintain the masjid al-haram and if you've been, like Umrah, or Hajj the scale of the operation there, like millions of Muslims on a daily, weekly basis, like it's very well managed and it's amazing that when you're staying there you're actually contributing to the self. You know sustaining, you know nature of looking after the Masjid Haram, but it's an amazing sort of instrument. And actually, if you go back to the Ottoman Empire, okaf like endowments were huge, they were almost ever-present and I think I read something about like one of the reasons why, you know, the Muslim Empire sort of collapsed were those endowments were like systematically sort of like you know, deconstructed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, during colonial times?
Speaker 2:Exactly yes, and that's how we've kind of gotten to where we are and how that maybe actually had an impact in terms of our scholarship, because the scholarship was funding, you know, for okara, right, yeah, and like scholars being self-sustaining and like not having to, I guess, exactly, yeah, I guess I think your keen made a video about this.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm mistaken potentially I I remember listening to it and I was like wow, because walks were throughout the islamic world and like were prevalent during the abbasids. The. Ottoman.
Speaker 1:Empire, and then we used to do everything from constructing roads, schools, universities, and whenever something fell to a colonial empire, that was one of the first things they systemically like took out was okay, we need them to be reliant on us. They cannot be self-sustaining, and it's this forgotten art of self-reliance that we're just like talking about now. But I feel like we need to walk the walk a little bit more now 100.
Speaker 2:I recently, recently, actually worked on a project with uh national work, uh through roots academy, which is a fantastic initiative to like help teach you know, muslim teenagers about, uh, what islam has to say in a practical, digestible way. But we were helping national work with developing like materials on ogaf and helping teach people and I think that's going to be rolled out like imminently. So I've done a lot of research around you know, work on ogaf, and what's crazy actually is how that concept of endowment has been taken by non-muslims and they've absolutely, you know, just knocked it out of the park. So, like harvard university is like they have a absolutely huge endowment there. Um, there's a sort of sector christianity, I think it might be moments I'm not quite sure they have a huge sort of endowment. There's a lot of non-muslims that have these huge endowments and their institutions are like self-funding.
Speaker 1:Cambridge is one of the richest institutions in this country the amount of land that they own, the ports that they have, farmland properties, like the college that I went to. Nearly every apartment in the area or home in the area was actually owned by them and they were just collecting rent on it. Um, and that's, that's what we need to move to and that's why I'm really backing um organizations like ever give. I don't know if you've heard I'm very familiar with evergive.
Speaker 2:It's uh, it's crazy. I remember I saw I'm I'm sort of active on on x and formerly twitter, talking about, like you know, bitcoin and I remember talking to some sort of muslim bitcoiners. I was wondering, like you know, it'd be amazing if there was a bitcoin, powered one and in credit to the evergive team, like they've actually done it, and created one, exactly A Bitcoin-powered wok individually for you that you can invest into, and I think they stake.
Speaker 1:Do they stake it? I'm not sure about that. Is that how the revenue is generated? I?
Speaker 2:think it's more like they expect Bitcoin to grow and they take a certain amount out which is less than the real return, and that's how the income's gone. I'm not quite sure that might be a good point.
Speaker 1:We need to fact check it. We'll get some from the evergive team on but, but.
Speaker 2:But. The whole concept is, instead of just donating once today, you want to put that money into an investment, and that investment doesn't have to be bitcoin. It could be property, it could be I don't know stocks and shares yeah, it could be any sort of asset class. The key is, though, you're making that money sort of transform into more, and then the profits then support a charity, but it's more sustainable. And then going back to that hadith about what you know what, what remains after you pass away is continuous charity, yeah, so I guess one of the things that we should be doing is giving our money to these organizations, so that maybe it's a direct debit of 10 pound a month, or, you know the next time, you know the last 10 nights, inshallah, if we, you know, if we reach it, you know we give some of that money to, like you know, okaf.
Speaker 2:And then there's a national work. I know why he launched the work. Uh, I think islamic relief, a lot of the mainstream charities. They have some version of a work. We're also like um, so amazing it's there, I think, more funding and then more sort of operational excellence yeah, I think that's it.
Speaker 1:And I think, just so people are clear what we're talking about here is that your funding it's not just a one-off thing, it's perpetual, so long after you're gone, that 10 pounds that you invested, maybe it grew into 100 pounds, maybe a thousand pounds, and it's just continuously generating return, not only to self-sustain the the investment originally itself, but also to give to whatever cause it is Maybe it's building wells in a certain country, or sustaining an orphanage, or whatever it might be and so that's exactly what we need to be thinking about doing with our money these days 100% and I think it's a way for us to have more influence than what we actually have.
Speaker 2:So we're not the wealthiest community, but by being consistent and by having a longer term sort of mindset we can actually achieve similar level of you know, of results as people with more money by just being diligent and, you know, having a long-term mindset, which I think muslims of the past really did. I think now it's very much short term, like you know five, ten years yeah, but back in, back in the day, like people would think ahead. Like you know, all these amazing mosques that were constructed.
Speaker 1:It took years and years and years to build right yeah but we're kind of, I guess, a bit too focused on the here and now I think it's cultural and I think it's a very immigrant mindset and that it's okay. It's okay. I've just gotten here, I need to focus on this. I need to focus on planting my roots. Planting my roots and then we'll worry about building the community and uplifting the community. But now we're like three, four generations in in this country at least, it's like. Now time to think beyond that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You talked about Bitcoin. Yes, it would be remiss of us not to talk about it, especially today where, I think this morning, bitcoin hit $122,000 USD which is a new, all-time high for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't actively check price movements. I'm very happy that I don't. It allows me to live a very stable and comfortable life without having to always look. But I know it has broken the $120,000 mark, which is crazy, but I know it has broken the 120,000 mark, which is subhanAllah, it's crazy. I think the first time I heard of it was 2017, when it hit around 20,000.
Speaker 2:And it fell back to around 2,000. And I remember I went to a seminar. It was Sheikh Haifam, it was Omar Suleiman, it was Tariq Al-Dawani. I remember Sheikh Haifam talking about Bitcoin Because one of my friends was telling me you know Bitcoin, etc. He's invested in it. And I wasn't quite sure. Like you know, I had no idea what it was. I remember Sheikh Haifam saying, like you know, it's not really based on anything, I don't think this is halal, etc. And I just it. But, alhamdulillah, a few years later I read, uh, the bitcoin standard by seyfedin, uh, amos, uh, just trying to learn, like what is this asset class? Like what, what actually is it? And learning about the nature of money itself, um, what we have as money right now, and like what past societies use for I mean, a famous example is gold, right, gold.
Speaker 2:And we used to be in a gold standard where our pounds, our dollars, were linked to a certain amount of gold that it could be redeemed for yeah uh, but we've since moved away and now it's all paper money, so it's pounds and dollars, and and the problem there is that the government, and actually the bank industry, has a disproportionate power to print more money. Yes, if you put money into a bank and that bank issues loans, it's not actually directly your money that's given out, it's just creating new money from pressing a few buttons. But the long and short of it is expanding the money supply and that money actually normally goes to the rich and it's called the Cantillion effect, and we then actually spend it first. The what effect? Sorry, cantillion, the Cantillion effect. We spend it first before inflation hits.
Speaker 2:So then they actually just invest it in assets, they invest in the stock market or in property etc. Which is another reason why stock market and property are have them so well in the last 30 years. If you look at 1971, when the us left the gold standard, you'll see there's a big correlation between the stock market and, you know, all these assets going on. It's because that money supply has been debased, its value sort of has decreased, so that now these assets actually, you know, increase as a result, because they were actually earning a return because there's stores of value, exactly when people say safe as houses.
Speaker 1:That actually has like a real monetary implication in that now that money and actual fiat currency can fluctuate.
Speaker 2:So much and it's, like you know, due to the whims of the government and then just deciding to print 30 of all us dollars in circulation during covid covid was crazy, I think the amount of money, if you look at the charts, uh, the money supply, I think in the us, I think it more than doubled, if I'm not mistaken like it was the scale of expansion in terms of money.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, now we're seeing inflation, right, and then they talk about, like you know, what's happening in Ukraine and like you know, you know, postcode, et cetera, but like a lot of it is actually the money supply. If there's more money, then it's going to be worth less. Each individual unit is going to be worth less, and and bitcoin, you know, comes along, uh, started by an anonymous founder called satoshi um, who was actually, you know, decrying this. You know, fiat currency is very against it, very unstable, loves, you know, store of value, and bitcoin is designed to be uh immutable in the sense that there are only ever going to be 21 million bitcoins and that algorithm is set in stone but it's not managed by one person and I think the beauty of it is like we don't know who satoshi is and there is no sort of individual person.
Speaker 1:that's yeah, we don't know if he's alive or dead.
Speaker 2:We don't know if he was one guy or if it was a group of people and his coins have been untouched, so he hasn't done anything, actually, he or they or wherever it is, it's untouched money supply that's now independent of one organization or one person, but it's now actually maintained by a consensus of different people, which is what decentralized means. It's not like centralized is like a bank you go to a bank and they're like the middleman, but decentralized means myself, arif Ibrahim, someone else, we all maintain this copy of the Bitcoin ledger, which is a record of all transactions and Bitcoin, the one source of truth, the one source of truth exactly, and that's the power of Bitcoin, which is it's a stable store of value, unlike fiat currency, which is, you know, your pounds, your dollars, etc.
Speaker 1:So is Bitcoin halal, or is that even the right question to ask?
Speaker 2:I don't think that's the right question. I think the right question is like what is Bitcoin and what is the nature of money? To the question of is Bitcoin Halal? It's for the scholars to ultimately answer, but there are scholars like Mufti Faraz who have opined on this, and scholars that have said yes, it is Halal, and that's the position that I follow, and actually taking the time to understand it. Because, if we're being honest, I think probably it is very technical and that's probably one of the drawbacks is it's very difficult to explain to a mass audience. I don't think I can explain to my mom exactly what Bitcoin is.
Speaker 2:But then also that's kind of the strength, which is why I think just asking is it halal or haram? Without understanding, I think probably isn't the right approach.
Speaker 1:But that's always the question that comes about in Islamic finance Is it halal? Is it not Followed by the second question how expensive is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the default is that everything's halal unless you know, proven explicitly otherwise. And then how expensive is very interesting. Moving on to that, because I think Islamic finance wise. And then how expensive is very interesting, uh, moving on to that, um, because, um, I think islamic finance companies have been criticized, and in many cases, rightly so. Uh, obviously, and criticism is welcome. It is a growing industry and companies, you know, need feedback to grow, for sure. But there is also a responsibility on as muslim consumers to actually support these companies. They won't actually get anywhere without Muslims supporting them. Who else is going to give money to Islamic banks or Islamic investment companies? If we don't give them the money, they won't actually get off the ground and then we have no options. But it seems to me as if there are a number of Muslims where the cost is more important than whether or not something is halal or haram.
Speaker 2:We care more about cost than we actually care about riba.
Speaker 1:And it comes back to that argument that someone put it to me very well was if halal chicken was more expensive than non-halal chicken, would we be having this debate about halal chicken? Would we be saying, is it really halal? Would we be questioning it in the same way? I don't think so. If halal mortgages were cheaper than normal mortgages, I think everyone would just go for it. I don't think anyone would be saying oh, how Islamic is it?
Speaker 1:How Islamic is Islamic finance? I really think that is the truth for most mass market practitioners, and I use Malaysia as a big example because in.
Speaker 1:Malaysia, islamic finance was introduced in the 80s, like mid to late 80s and they had some teething problems, the same way we do. They were more expensive and it was a cost of capital issue in that the source of funds was different than it was for the conventional mortgages and the conventional credit systems itself, so it was more expensive. The difference was that Muslims actually backed the product. Muslims actually went and took up the Islamic mortgages. There were some grumblings about the price but they said look, it's Sharia compliant. Our scholars said it's Sharia compliant, we're backing it. And now today Islamic financing is like 45% of all of Malaysia's financing in the country, and that's with a Muslim population of only about 60% 65%, which is huge and they've reached price parity.
Speaker 1:They did it because they committed to doing it whereas in this country we're so just caught up and it's not people's fault, I get it, but the debate starts and it's also kind of like it. It's it's kind of where we are financially as well, like can people actually afford a conventional mortgage, let alone an islamic mortgage? Should an islamic mortgage be seen as a luxury product, as it almost kind of is? Now right? Can I even afford an islamic mortgage?
Speaker 2:yes, so I think there's there's two things here right, if you genuinely can't afford it and that's a separate issue, right, versus those that maybe have the means but they don't want to spend, and it's not. It's not just a case of, like you know, they're more expensive. There are, like products where, like, for example, savings but the rates are actually top of the market, so there are, you know, good things there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people don't complain about the halal savings accounts but then, yeah, and if you think about it, if you're getting four percent on your halal savings, which then go into providing the mortgages, how are you going to get a mortgage up four percent? Then there's, yeah, the. The bank makes no money yeah, yeah, yeah and there needs to be and there's also.
Speaker 2:You know the cost of actually, you know managing that and you know these big. You know hsbc, halifax, they they deal in billions of pounds whereas we're dealing in like the low millions there's. You know the cost that we have is quite substantial and the only way that improves is, you know, if you get more funding you're backing it you support it, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask the question.
Speaker 2:Actually, it's like I'm in this country we're very good at in terms of halal food is our only option. We don't really sort of make compromises for having haram food. But why are we in it comes to like income and like money, like we're so lenient and and I've been thinking about this, and there's a, there's a quite famous hadith where the prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam talked about someone that made a, a dua, and he you know, he, he's, yeah, his his food was haram, his drink was haram, he nourished himself with haram. How can he, you know, expect his dua to be answered?
Speaker 2:and it's not just food, it's also, like, you know, the income, the sustenance right and like I don't know why we have, like you know, haram food, bad haram income, you kind of just it is what it is right, because there are areas of the UK you go but there isn't halal food available, but we still we compromise, we have vegetarian or we actually put the effort into, like you know, work on these halal factories and, like you know, sourcing food and building the infrastructure. But we're trying to build the infrastructure right now for the finance industry. So you don't have those options. So you have those options but then it's not being supported.
Speaker 2:And I was thinking about it actually on the way here and I feel like the problem might actually start with the bank accounts, because we almost, I guess 30 years ago, there was no alternate right. All you have is a HFC or Halifax as our option. And if you're immediately, like you know, I've got a Halifax account and we know it's not ideal and it's a savings account and there's also current at least the current you're not actually getting interest, but the bank is still using it for interest when there's like degrees of separation, but of separation.
Speaker 1:but by accepting that I'm still accepting that today, when there are perhaps more alternatives, we're almost conditioning ourselves to think it's fine, yeah, because that first step is it's okay, and it's not that big of a leap to go from there to that. Let me just get a more financial finance exactly the moment you get your halifax or hsbc current account when you're 16 years old. Yeah, which is why we're launching the Kestrel current account this is why I mentioned it because for the longest time.
Speaker 2:I genuinely think that's the innovation I'm the most excited about is an actual, true Islamic bank account that you know has good user experience. That's like at a similar level to like, let's say, a Monzo or Revolut, where it's good but also, you know, it's halal, we can be happy with it, and then we go and then it's on everyone, it's on all of us to like, actually use it and, you know, take your money out of these banks because, even if you're not getting interest, the bank is literally using your money to lend, to give loans to someone else and, yes, that's their problem, but you're still. But it's better if we take our money out and put it into a slimy bank account. So I'm rooting for you guys.
Speaker 2:I know when I joined Wadid there was this whole ambition to build a gold bank, a gold-backed debit card bank account. I was really excited about that. For various reasons it didn't really work, but obviously you guys, with the recent launch, I think that could be the switch.
Speaker 1:That's where we want to take it. We want to explore the gold-backed option. We want to explore a crypto-backed card as well, which some people are in the conventional space doing already, but we can do that. Like the rails are already there, it can be done. So no, jazakallah, I genuinely didn't ask him to say that, like that was not in a script or anything.
Speaker 2:Nah, anyone that knows me, like, especially in the industry, like I always talk about bank accounts, yeah, because that's that's the first thing, right, if you think about, like, personal finance. Yeah, so I, most of my content, I think of you know what's that person. That's, I guess, in university or starting on a first job. What do they need to know? Right back to 21, 21 year old me that's trying to figure out right. And the first step is you know number one, you need to earn money right, so making sure your money's hello. When the second is like, once you know number one, you need to earn money right, so making sure your money is halal. But the second is like once you have the money, where do you put it? Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's that first thing of you're putting it somewhere. And then if your first decision is somewhere that's like in a not halal or not pure place, then, like you, kind of already become a bit corrupted, which is now saving and Hamzah, our savings account, and then moving on to investing Hamzah, there's lots of options now. The more options, the better right. We have providers. I work for Wahid, I work for IFG. We also have Q8. I've also written for Zoya, who help out in the investing space. There's many different options coming along which is great.
Speaker 1:Right after you we have the guys from nisba actually coming after this to talk a lot about um with their comparisons, their comparison screeners and their calculators.
Speaker 1:So we're definitely going to talk, talk more on that as well, uh, for sure. But yeah, there are options out there. But I feel like you've hit the nail on the head and the reason we wanted to do the currency count is because I think the same issue is prevalent everywhere and it goes back to the question you asked why are we so good on food but we're not so good on income or money? It's awareness, like time and time again, every single survey that we've done, gatehouse have done ifg have done, the number one reason people do not engage with islamic finance is not this like debate oh, is it islamic or not? People just genuinely don't know what's out there. That's always like the number one thing is oh, I didn't know, I didn't know there was an islamic savings account.
Speaker 1:Right, we even had this on uh, the london muslim tech bros whatsapp group, that I always shout out that I put up this survey recently and there were people like saying I didn't even know there was an islamic savings account, so which, um you know I'm laughing about? But loads of people, loads of people don't know that. Loads of people don't, and it's a, it's a marketing issue that we just haven't cracked. So that's why I wanted to start with the current account and work with the existing players who have those investment products already in the market and bring them on board. Bring them on board, why not? And then see if we can solve, yeah, that assets and liability mismatch that we have when it comes to the credit side, when it comes to the islamic mortgages so that's the thinking behind it.
Speaker 2:Amazing, uh, really excited about it. Going back to the market a bit, which I guess is kind of my bread and butter, and I guess what I'm really passionate about is getting the word out and I think, uh, where people can help people listening is like when the word reaches you, spread it. I'm always telling people, like, whatever I'm telling you, go and spread it. Like my journey started was me, you know, learning from, I guess, from my fg, from reading stuff, but spreading what I have, what I've known right, go tell your family, like, how else are we gonna get a word out? Like you know, you have to go like people that are watching this podcast or read anything who knows something, even if it's something that's little.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't get houses this or kestrel's launching this. Share the word and you'll get, you know, a share, that reward and like, and I guess beyond that, like um, it's a quite I think rff probably river free foundation, probably best place to maybe lead on this, but obviously we should all support we need to like get to the mosque, because where does every Muslim go? They go through a mosque, right, education is a bit mixed. You know different schools etc. And they might not actually discover us online or they're not searching for us, but the one, I guess, place where we can actually reach every, almost every Muslim is a mosque, and that's where, from you know from birth yeah from a very young age from
Speaker 1:cradle to grave, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should be teaching people like you know it's a serious problem. I mean there are sermons like avoid river fantastic how tell them?
Speaker 1:yeah, tell them, father are really good at that yeah they do a lot of things. I know ifg do as well, but I think father built their, built their house forgive the analogy, but in the masjids. I think that's how they started off, how they fundraised initially for their first properties, for their own startup. Even now. I think they were in Southampton recently.
Speaker 1:Razza fact-checked me on that, but I'm pretty sure, I saw some marketing for them out there on that, so they're really good at that. But I think you're right. But to counter that a little bit, I think young muslims these days are getting most of their information from youtube, tiktok, instagram, rather than friday sermons interesting and what's really interesting about that is youtube and tiktok and instagram.
Speaker 2:They it's quite algorithm driven, so the algorithm will actually push your content to the people, right? Yeah, and so there are. You guys obviously have this podcast, right. I have been in a YouTube channel for many years. There are other people you know making content about cyber finance yeah. The algorithm will push it out to you if you're like looking if you're already looking.
Speaker 2:Exactly already looking exactly. So there's a bit of a dual problem there, right, you see it will. It will reach you if you're, if you're kind of looking for it. So it's quite hard to like get to the people that aren't looking for it, because you can't really go viral without people actually engaging with the content and you know, and then the algorithm shares it even more, right. So it's a bit of having the content is being produced and there's enough out there. It's just getting the word out which kind of we need okay, so people.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about marketing strategies. How did you feel? How did you feel about wahid's viral campaign recently? When they had yeah, they had mufti menk on the tfl you know with. Because that's interesting? Because there you're reaching whole new brackets of people that you had never reached before. You're not talking about early adopters in any way, people who are going out looking for, looking for a solution.
Speaker 3:You're talking about mass market you may not even have known that there's a problem.
Speaker 1:Now you're educating them about the problem, not just muslims, but non-muslims, and for people who don't know, I think we can put up a picture of it, but I I thought it was a great campaign. Um, we had murphy menk and he was holding a briefcase full of money. Do you don't want to talk about this?
Speaker 2:I'm perfectly fine talking about it. Like I've been asked many times and like I think the purpose of marketing is to get people talking about something oh, and it got people talking about it whether you agree or disagree, because I know there are people on both sides with like valid, you know opinions oh yeah, it got banned.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, the banned, which is actually crazy.
Speaker 2:I think, as Muslims, probably we should have Spoken out, and I was actually working For Wahid at the time. So like it's not, like.
Speaker 1:Oh, were you there then? I was there at the time. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:But, like it got people talking, whether you disagree or you didn't disagree, and so I think it achieved the aim and it got into mainstream media, which is Can Can you think of any other Islamic violence campaign? I mean, maybe some people argue it was the wrong one to do it because it was, you know, hostile.
Speaker 1:Was it hostile.
Speaker 2:I think there's this complex of us Muslims we don't want to rock the boat, but everyone else does it and it's just burning money, but like there are many non-Muslims that talk about the evils of fiat currency. Yeah. And it's fine.
Speaker 1:But because we're muslim, we can't do it because we're seen as other and like foreign, so I didn't quite like that angle of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like what? Yeah, what was going on behind the scenes, or why I wasn't actually involved at this time? At this time, I was, uh, away from the marketing.
Speaker 1:I was in the product team.
Speaker 2:Okay so I wasn't there and so like the day-to-day okay yeah because I don't know.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about this. Iqbal nassim wrote a very impassioned response on linkedin about how he thinks this is wrong and it it took people away from it, and I'd love to get iqbal's thoughts on it when we have him on the on the podcast soon, inshallah, but I I kind of had a similar view to you yeah that I thought no one has ever talked about islamic finance on this level before.
Speaker 1:And yeah, okay, there was. Some of the far right were using it for ammunition, but they're looking for any excuse to do that, whereas suddenly you have all these muslims who are like I've never heard of whitehead before oh, mostly banks involved. Oh, khabib is involved.
Speaker 2:Let me check that out yeah, I think when we get like a pylon from like the far right, I think at that point you kind of go now's not the time for us to jump on, now's the time for us to actually stand behind one of our own and like support. But then, going back to it, I completely forgot the point I was going to make. So you carry on. I'll try and remember it, but that was the point I was looking at.
Speaker 1:No, I think it's. That thing is all. Publicity is good publicity, you know, and yeah, the far right are picking up all these, picking up anything that they can To make us look bad. Recently it was. Should we ban the burqa Women who are wearing Niqabs? They're forced into it. None of them have chosen to do that. Should we ban halal meat as well?
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting I've read this when these sort of mass negative publicity events around muslims, many people actually discover islam through it. Yeah, these, you know shocking things and like what's going on? This is so bad. Let me actually go see what this book has to say. And it's like we need the quran and learn about things. So shocking is isn't actually necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 1:True, you're getting in front of people. There's a american italian revert guy on youtube okay who? He was very staunchly anti-islam, devout christian okay, and he read through the whole quran I think live on stream right yeah, and within three days. And by the end of it he was just like I'm the liar. I need to revert like I need to become so I don't know. So you're, you're right, you're right. Sometimes these things can draw people towards it.
Speaker 2:And then I think one thing to probably point out is like as Muslims we've been sort of bickering amongst ourselves for like generations.
Speaker 1:Oh, since the beginning, there's all these different schools, conflicting views on the advert yeah I was.
Speaker 2:I kind of have quite a boring view, which is I thought you know what? They had two options right, just to shock and provoke, or like go really tame and like the shock and provoke when I guess, got a reaction.
Speaker 1:So they achieved what? What was tame gonna do?
Speaker 2:no one was gonna no, it would just sort of just wouldn't really make an uh, yeah, an impact and and people are welcome to actually, by the way, go out and like do something else and actually show you know and actually maybe prove us all wrong and say you can actually that was a better way to go viral yeah but to be fair, so far no one no one else has.
Speaker 1:No one else has it's charity. You see charities doing it a lot, a lot of charities, do billboard campaigns and buses. Do you think that's something you guys will do at ifg?
Speaker 2:Adverts. Yeah, I think right now, like our focus is just on, like you know, free content.
Speaker 1:Organic, Just education organic.
Speaker 2:We're not really at the point where it kind of makes sense to advertise. I think our advertising is just investing in the content and probably that's credit to like Ibrahim and like Mohsin, like they were kind of ahead of the curve in that. Credit to like ibrahim on the muslim, like they were kind of ahead of the curve in that they were in terms of like using youtube and using the blog so I don't think we quite need to like until like that stops bringing people in there's no real need when you want to cross the bridge towards mass market customers.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what you would look for the more paid for type things.
Speaker 2:But even like so our aim is to make like the ifg sort of youtube channel. Like you know, the a world-class channel, but I'm gonna learn everything about finance.
Speaker 1:I feel I see it as like the yakin institute of islamic finance is kind of like what's coming out of ifg.
Speaker 2:So yeah, mashallah, more power to you guys obviously you guys are, like you know, contributing and like more, more people.
Speaker 2:It can't just be like just ifg and krel was there too yeah, and I know you need it and like in terms of like growing like, it's like, if you look at like outside of like our niche of Islamic finance, you have all these other various people who are creating and like someone does something that like just breaks through and everyone's like oh, that's a cool idea and it's all like built upon it, whereas if you, you're the only person like, you have no one to really go off, and I think that's probably been a problem for like ifg is like there's no, there's no reference point in terms of content, like a lot of like mainstream content.
Speaker 2:Marketing advice is like let's go and see what's working yeah, there's nothing else to look at the way you're looking at that conventional sort of you know, youtube channels and stuff and learning from them, are actually with the more power of getting more people and ultimately, like the goal is. So the goal of ifg is to get as many muslims as possible investing so we can grow our wealth, and that's as many muslims and if that's for, you know, and that doesn't have to be just us, it could be other people and like and I think it's sort of this mindset of like scarcity but like everyone's trying to fight for like a very like a small pie, but if you just make A larger pie, there's more to go around, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So, like More. We need more competition. There's like A handful of banks, there's a handful Of investment options, but you're not Muslim. You have dozens. Yeah. Maybe even hundreds, like who knows? You have an entire universe when we have like Just a few.
Speaker 1:We need more competition. That's it Exactly. Competition, that's it exactly. Yeah, gosh, what a great way to end this, although I think we're almost out of time, but although, thank you so much, we're gonna have to get you back in future, next time you're down from leeds thank you for having me inshallah, assalamu alaikum, thank you for listening to the muslim money talk podcast.
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