Pakistan Crypto Regulator Seeks Talks After Religious Ruling on Payments

Pakistan's top crypto official is asking for more discussion after a respected religious scholar declared that paying for things with cryptocurrency goes against Islamic law.

The head of Pakistan's crypto regulator (the government body that makes rules for digital money) — the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, or PVARA — met with well-known Islamic scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani. Rather than argue against the ruling, the regulator's chairman, Bilal bin Saqib, called for ongoing conversations between scholars, regulators, and the crypto industry.

What was the ruling?

According to Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Usmani and five other scholars signed a religious legal ruling stating that:

• Buying things with crypto — including stablecoins like USDT (a type of crypto designed to always be worth about $1, backed by regular money) — is not permitted under Islamic law.
• The reason: digital tokens don't count as real "property" or "wealth" under their interpretation of the faith.

Religious opinions carry huge weight here. In the 2023 census, about 231.7 million people — or 96.35% of the population — identified as Muslim. That means religious rulings could strongly influence whether ordinary people accept and use crypto.

This creates tension: the government wants to build a regulated crypto market (a legal, government-supervised system for buying and selling digital money), but religious objections could slow public acceptance.

The regulator's response

Saqib argued that not all crypto should be judged the same way. He explained that blockchain (the technology behind crypto), digital assets, stablecoins, and "tokenized real-world assets" (physical things like property turned into tradeable digital tokens) are very different and deserve careful technical study alongside religious review.

In short, Pakistan is trying to balance modern financial technology with deeply held religious beliefs. Instead of a head-on clash, the regulator is choosing dialogue — hoping to find common ground between innovation and faith.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://cointelegraph.com/news/pakistan-crypto-chief-dialogue-islamic-ruling?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound