Diverging sharia opinions, not regulation alone, are fragmenting crypto across Islamic markets

Fitch Ratings finds that Islamic markets are converging on crypto adoption but diverging sharply on how it is regulated — the same asset treated as compliant in one jurisdiction and left untouched by law in the next. Malaysia leads on openness: its Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council has cleared Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Stellar as sharia-compliant, and ten regulated platforms handled more than $4bn in trading volume in 2025. The UAE has built the largest hub by volume — nearly $680bn in transactions across regulated entities and $2.5bn in assets under management — after its Higher Shari'ah Authority ruled Bitcoin permissible in 2025. Bahrain licensed its first stablecoin issuer in June and now has nine service providers. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has passed no crypto legislation at all, and Pakistan is moving the other direction after a prominent fatwa held that cryptocurrency does not constitute wealth under sharia. The gap is not really about technology; it is about which body's ruling a market is willing to treat as authoritative, and that is being answered country by country rather than once.

This is a QeRN summary by Ahmed Qerni. Read the original at The Star / Fitch Ratings: https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2026/09/16/malaysia-among-more-open-islamic-markets-for-crypto-fitch-says.