self-reliance

A collection of 27 posts

Pakistan raises Rs239.3bn in its first-ever hybrid sukuk auction

On July 22, Pakistan's finance ministry ran its first auction of a short-term hybrid sukuk, a new Shariah-compliant instrument spanning three-month, six-month, one-year, and ten-year tenors. Bids came in at a face value of Rs770 billion against a target of roughly a quarter of that, and the ministry

self-reliance

Burjeel prices a $500m debut sukuk backed by medical equipment

Burjeel Holdings priced its inaugural $500 million sukuk in late June under a newly established $1.5 billion programme, with Clifford Chance advising — the firm's global Islamic finance team led from Dubai. The structure matters more than the headline: the certificates are backed by a pool of medical-equipment

self-reliance

Bangladesh's sukuk boom hasn't built a real Islamic capital market

Bangladesh's sovereign sukuk programme has raised roughly Tk 53,000 crore since its first issue in December 2020, and a Daily Star analysis (reported by IANS on 1 July) argues it has still failed to build a real Islamic capital market. The critique is structural: nearly every issue

What a tenfold oversubscription says about Islamic banking

Bangladesh sold its first short-term sovereign sukuk on 28 June — 273 days, 9.36% — seeking Tk5,500 crore and receiving offers worth Tk56,607 crore, more than ten times the ask. One bank alone bid Tk4,400 crore and was allocated a tenth of that. The oversubscription is not a

Sukuk passes $1 trillion and becomes ordinary

The London Stock Exchange Group's 2025 Islamic Investment Review, published 2 July, reports that outstanding sukuk worldwide have crossed $1 trillion, with issuance up 14.5% last year and Islamic fund assets up 37% to $223 billion. Two details deserve attention beyond the headline number. First, 41% of

UAE opens its first retail sukuk to ordinary savers

The UAE Ministry of Finance has opened subscriptions for its first Sovereign Retail T-Sukuk, letting individual citizens and residents buy government-backed, Shariah-compliant paper directly, with returns around 4.3% and listing on Nasdaq Dubai. Sovereign sukuk are usually an institutional market — banks and funds trading in large denominations while ordinary

self-reliance

Islamic tech startups: an ecosystem in the making

Surveys of the Muslim-world technology scene, including Salaam Gateway's work with DinarStandard on its Top 30 Digital Islamic Economy startups, describe an ecosystem that is still assembling its own parts. The founders are visible across fintech, travel, modest fashion, media and halal food tech; what has lagged is

The IsDB opens 2026 with a $1bn sukuk — and central banks bought half of it

The Islamic Development Bank opened its 2026 funding year with a one-billion-dollar benchmark sukuk, its first issuance of the year. What matters is less the headline figure than who bought it: central banks and official institutions took close to half the order book. That is the signal of a market

self-reliance

Fitch projects growth in Nigeria's non-interest finance and sukuk through 2026

Fitch Ratings expects Nigeria's non-interest finance sector to keep expanding through 2026, and the reason it gives is institutional rather than cyclical: a wave of regulatory reform and new liquidity tools from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) designed specifically for non-interest financial institutions. The growth, in other

Self-Reliance: Islamic Finance

Are the Muslims Right about Debt?

The Quran denounces riba in the most categorical terms. The term riba is synonymous with the traditional concept of usury, and in modern terms, generally means interest, i.e. exploitative interest on debt, especially to the poor.  Generally, it excludes commercial discounting on current trade — which is not usury or

Self-Reliance: Economics

Guess who is Progressive on Women? Vatican or Al-Azhar?

From the archive (2013): Al-Azhar versus the Vatican on women’s rights — checking institutions against their reputations, empirically.

Self-Reliance: Economics

Robert Fisk: Bankers are the dictators of the West

Robert Fisk, Saturday, 10 December 2011 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-bankers-are-the-dictators-of-the-west-6275084.html# Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other “story” – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so

Self-Reliance: Economics

Lessons from Greek Financial Woes

From the archive (2011): Greece’s lessons — debt is sovereignty on a schedule; institutions that can’t collect can’t protect. True for communities too.

Self-Reliance: Technology

Cyber War: Big Brother Lashing Out

From the archive (2010): on cyber operations and official duplicity, written when the vocabulary was new — the case for technical literacy and owned infrastructure.

Self-Reliance: Economics

Conspiracy Theory vs Academic Naiveté

From the archive (2010): between conspiracy theory and academic naivety — follow the money, with evidence; structured scepticism as a teachable skill.

Self-Reliance: Economics

Business Risk: Risk Hedging, De-regulation and Segmentation

From the archive (2009): the crisis and healthcare read through one mechanism — who carries risk. Risk allocation is institutional design.

Self-Reliance: Technology

Government-wide Licenses: a Good Idea?

From the archive (2009): one vendor for a whole government — a procurement question that is now the AI question for whole societies.

Self-Reliance: Economics

US Stimulus Bill - a clear shift

From the archive (2009): the stimulus read as experiment, not allegiance — hypothesis, scale, result; the habit of mind is the asset.

Self-Reliance: Economics

A tale of two countries: Senegal and Botswana

courtesy: Reuters Two relatively prosperous African countries: one with an HIV infection rate of 1.4% and the other with 37%. Read on: **DAKAR (AlertNet) **- Senegal is a poor country, yet its HIV rate is one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of early, bold and

Self-Reliance: Economics

Report on on Pakistan's Economy

4.2pc reduction in poverty, claims Economic Survey Per capita income $652; GDP growth 6.4pc; defence spending Rs 180bn; base year changed from 1980-81 to 1999-2000 By Nadeem Malik ISLAMABAD: The Economic Survey 2003-04, declaring all is well, claims 4.2 per cent reduction in poverty, 652 dollars per

Self-Reliance: Technology

Arabic, Urdu and Farsi Localization of Open-Source Software

From the archive (2002): the call to localise open-source software into Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi — an argument that now applies verbatim to open AI models.

Self-Reliance: Economics

Foreign Investors Turning Cautious on Spending in U.S.

From the archive (2002): foreign capital cooling on the US — capital flows as sentiment with a settlement date, and the case for foundations that don’t depend on them.

Self-Reliance: Technology

MS Windows, the FBI and Open Source

A 2002 QeRN piece on the FBI's 'Magic Lantern', Windows backdoors and open source — an early version of what is now the AI-sovereignty argument.

Self-Reliance: Economics

Picket Outside The Waldorf , Barbara Garson

The WEF (World Economic Forum is meeting at the Waldorf in New York from Jan 31 to Feb 5. Barbara Garson adds some perspective on why some decisions made there will force other people to drink unhealthy water. I own shares in a few companies that are members of the

Self-Reliance: Technology

Debian Operating System

From the archive (2002): recommending Debian — community-governed software a community can read and trust. The logic now extends to open AI.