QeRN

Pakistan raises Rs144.15bn in a Hybrid Sukuk auction, pricing a 10-year variable-rate tranche

Pakistan's Ministry of Finance raised Rs144.153bn through a Government of Pakistan Hybrid Sukuk auction held at the Pakistan Stock Exchange on 19 August 2026. Demand ran far ahead of the amount taken: total bids reached Rs573.007bn in face value, with a realised bid value of Rs553.

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QeRN Insider — week 2026-W36

QeRN Weekly — week 2026-W36

Five stories this week, and the common thread is specification. A curriculum written in three cycles rather than announced as a priority. A memorandum of understanding that has held three congregations on one piece of ground for twenty years. A capital instrument deep enough to upsize on demand. A syllabus

ICESCO's Bridges of Civilisation programme opens a Dhofar chapter with Oman

Oman hosted an ICESCO delegation in Dhofar from 25 to 28 August under the organisation's Bridges of Civilisation programme, run by its General Secretariat of National Commissions and Conferences to build direct working ties between ICESCO and member states. The delegation spent the visit on the ground rather

ICESCO trains manuscript specialists from 54 countries in critical text editing

ICESCO, working with the Tahqiq scholarly platform, ran a three-day training session titled 'The Islamic Manuscript: From Paleography to Critical Text Editing', reaching hundreds of researchers and specialists across 54 countries. Five lectures covered manuscript geography, codicology, paleography and cataloguing, then the fundamentals of critical editing, the auxiliary

Omaha's shared synagogue, mosque and church campus turns twenty

Twenty years on, the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska has produced the first campus in the United States where a synagogue, a mosque and a church share the same 38 acres, joined by an interfaith centre. It began after 9/11, when members of a local synagogue stood guard outside

Riyad Bank's Tier 1 sukuk draws SAR13.6bn and is upsized to SAR10bn

Riyad Bank closed the public offering of its Saudi-riyal Additional Tier 1 capital sukuk with total subscriptions of SAR13.6bn against an original SAR5bn target, roughly 2.7 times covered, and doubled the issuance to SAR10bn in response. The certificates are perpetual, offered at a 6.5% profit rate, issued

The UAE makes AI a required school subject, reception through grade 12

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, has announced that artificial intelligence will be taught as a subject at every stage of UAE government education, from reception through grade 12, beginning next academic year. The curriculum is built in three cycles that escalate deliberately: in the first,

News

Islamic Development Bank Institute signs a grant to build an Islamic banking window in the Maghreb

The Islamic Development Bank Institute (IsDBI) and Morocco's Maghreb Bank for Investment and Foreign Trade (BMICE) signed a grant agreement in Jeddah on August 12 to help BMICE stand up its own Islamic finance window. The agreement funds technical assistance rather than capital: IsDB Institute will work with

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QeRN Insider — week 2026-W35

QeRN Weekly — week 2026-W35

Four stories this week trace the same shape: institutions doing the unglamorous work of holding a line. A 57-nation body quietly executes a leadership succession. A ministry registers another endowment, share by share. A century-old scouting organisation declines to treat its Muslim members as a special case. A monitoring group

London's Islamophobic incidents already exceed 2023's full-year total, Tell MAMA finds

Tell MAMA, the UK monitoring group that tracks and supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, reported that London alone logged 1,031 Islamophobic incidents in just the first six months of 2026 -- already surpassing the 1,028 recorded across the whole of 2023. The trendline is not new: Tell MAMA&

CAIR welcomes Girl Scouts' defense of Muslim religious-recognition badges

When online backlash targeted the Girl Scouts' Islamic religious-recognition badges this month, the organisation's response was notable less for what it said than for what it didn't: it declined to treat Muslim scouts as a special case. Girl Scouts of the USA -- like Scouting

Qatar's Awqaf registers a 58,988-share endowment under its 'Waqf Al-Wuqoof' initiative

Qatar's General Directorate of Endowments has registered a new investment endowment of 58,988 shares in companies listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange, donated under the ministry's 'Waqf Al-Wuqoof' -- Endowment of Endowments -- initiative. It is the first such gift on record for

OIC elects Mauritania's Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed as new Secretary-General

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's 57 foreign ministers elected Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed as the bloc's next secretary-general on August 27, meeting in extraordinary session in Jeddah. He succeeds Chad's Hissein Brahim Taha, whose term formally closes in November, and arrives with

self-reliance

A routine Bahraini sukuk auction draws 264% oversubscription

The Central Bank of Bahrain's monthly Sukuk Al-Salam issue -- the 304th in the short-term series -- was oversubscribed by 264 percent in August, with BD132.209 million in subscriptions received against a BD50 million offering. The 91-day securities, running from 12 August to 11 November 2026, carry

identity

A Dublin mosque arson becomes a case study in social-media-amplified Islamophobia

A report from the Hope and Courage Collective, "The Islamophobia Playbook: A Project of Hate," uses the alleged arson attack on Dublin's Al Madinah Prayer Hall (Talbot Street mosque) as a case study in how social media platforms amplify anti-Muslim hostility during a crisis. A Facebook

theology

A Malaysian university convenes scholars on AI and Maqasid al-Shariah

The International Islamic University Malaysia is hosting the 7th International Conference on Islamic Jurisprudence (ICIJ2026), an academic gathering that examines artificial intelligence through the classical framework of Maqasid al-Shariah -- the higher objectives of Islamic law, such as preserving intellect, faith, life, lineage and property. The conference brings together researchers,

institutions

CAIR ships a legislative toolkit for local Muslim civic organizing

CAIR and CAIR Action released a 2026 Toolkit on Promoting Muslim Civic Engagement in Local and State Governments, compiling model resolutions, proclamations, executive orders, acts and bills already introduced or enacted in jurisdictions nationwide so local chapters and advocates do not have to draft language from scratch. The toolkit spans

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QeRN Insider — week 2026-W34

QeRN Weekly — week 2026-W34

This week's throughline is infrastructure that keeps working after the announcement fades: a voter platform built for maintenance, not a news cycle; a sovereign debt program that quietly deepens by the month; a directory whose real use is finding the gaps it hasn't filled yet. None

CAIR launches Muslims.Vote, a national civic-engagement platform

CAIR has launched Muslims.Vote, a national civic-engagement platform meant to be a one-stop hub for America's roughly three million registered Muslim voters ahead of the November 2026 midterms. The site bundles voter-registration verification, polling-place lookup, election-date reminders, voting-rights information and a personalized vote-planning tool into a single

Saudi Arabia's debt agency raises $2.54bn in a five-tranche August sukuk sale

Saudi Arabia's National Debt Management Center closed its August sukuk issuance at SAR9.52 billion ($2.54 billion), spread across five tranches maturing between 2031 and 2041 -- a 78 percent jump from July's issuance. The sale is the routine mechanics of a debt program that

Muslim education leaders back England's plan for a national RE curriculum

The UK government is expected to open a consultation in September on giving religious education national-curriculum status in England for the first time -- a shift Muslim education leaders have welcomed as a fix for patchy, locally variable RE teaching. Since a 1988 law made RE compulsory but left syllabuses

Oman opens registration for a nationwide literacy and adult-education drive

Oman's Ministry of Education has opened registration for its 2026-27 literacy and adult-education programmes, with applications open through August 30 for literacy classes and October 22 for adult education. The push has already moved the national illiteracy rate to 2.5 percent, and to just 0.5 percent