QeRN (Page 2)

Pakistan's Islamic Research Institute and NACTA sign a counter-extremism accord

The Islamic Research Institute (IRI) of the International Islamic University Islamabad and Pakistan's National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly counter violent extremism, strengthen inter-sectarian harmony and advance peacebuilding nationally. The agreement, signed by IIUI's acting rector Professor Ahmed Saad Alahmed

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QeRN Insider — week 2026-W38

QeRN Weekly — week 2026-W38

Five stories this week, and the thread running through them is the difference between a rule and a ruling. A lab publishes not just its model weights but the data and the method, so anyone can check the claim. Twenty-five education ministers sign a statement and — more usefully — publish the

The Fiqh Academy's standing ruling on artificial intelligence, and its six conditions

The International Islamic Fiqh Academy of the OIC issued Resolution No. 258 (3/26), 'Artificial Intelligence: Its Rulings, Guidelines, and Ethics', at its twenty-sixth session in Doha, 4-8 May 2025. The Council holds that the default ruling on developing and using AI is permissibility, ibaahah, subject to six

Open models for Indian languages arrive, and Urdu handwriting is in scope

Bodhan AI, an IIT Madras-incubated centre, has released a suite of open foundational models for Indian languages, built with NVIDIA and AI4Bharat. Four capabilities ship together: speech recognition (Indic-Transcribe), text-to-speech (Indic-Speak), machine translation (Indic-Translate) and optical character recognition (Indic-OCR). Translation covers 22 languages, speech synthesis 23, and transcription 26 Indian

The Islamic Development Bank prices a second billion-and-a-half sukuk on ordinary terms

On 2 September the Islamic Development Bank priced US$1.5 billion of five-year trust certificates, its second benchmark sukuk of 2026, under its US$25 billion Trust Certificate Issuance Programme. The transaction closed at 48 basis points over SOFR mid-swaps, two basis points inside initial guidance, at par, with

Twenty-five education ministers sign a statement on who governs AI in schools

UNESCO's Digital Learning Week ran in Paris from 8 to 11 September under the theme 'Education in the age of AI: Facts, Frictions, Frontiers', and closed with a joint ministerial statement on sustaining education as a common good in the age of AI. More than twenty-five

Abu Dhabi's IFM ships six models with the training data attached

On 3 September the Institute of Foundation Models, launched by Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in May 2025, released K2 Horizon: six foundation models from 0.9 billion to 375 billion parameters, all under Apache 2.0. What distinguishes the release is not the size range but what

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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,

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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

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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