self-reliance

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.

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

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

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

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

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

self-reliance

Uzbekistan explores building a waqf system with UNDP and the Islamic Development Bank

On 3 August 2026, UNDP convened a round table with Uzbekistan's Committee on Religious Affairs and the Islamic Development Bank to discuss findings on building a formal waqf system for the country. The session sits inside a joint initiative — "Developing the Enabling Environment for AWQAF in Uzbekistan&

Indonesia's exchange lists its first Shariah-compliant gold ETFs

Five Indonesian asset managers listed Shariah-compliant, gold-backed ETFs on the Indonesia Stock Exchange on August 10, under a fatwa from the National Sharia Board of the Indonesian Ulema Council (DSN-MUI). Each unit is backed by physical gold held via Electronic Gold Receipts at the central depository, giving retail investors exchange-traded

self-reliance

MENA startup funding holds at $1.7bn in H1 2026, down 18% year on year

MENA startups raised $1.7 billion across 242 funding rounds in the first half of 2026, an 18 percent decline from $2.1 billion a year earlier, as investors grew more selective under regional geopolitical uncertainty rather than retreating outright, according to Wamda's H1 2026 report. The UAE

self-reliance

GCC sukuk issuance rises 13.1% despite regional conflict concerns

Sukuk issuance across the Gulf Cooperation Council rose 13.1 percent in the first four months of 2026, driven by strong local-currency borrowing in Saudi Arabia, according to S&P Global Ratings' report "Islamic Finance 2026-2027: Navigating Rough Waters." Global sukuk issuance rose 20 percent over

Pakistan's sukuk auction is now routine, and that's the story

On August 5, Pakistan's finance ministry ran the 14th auction in a hybrid sukuk calendar it began only this year, targeting Rs125 billion and drawing bids worth Rs757 billion, more than six times oversubscribed. The government accepted Rs171 billion, split between short-dated fixed-rate paper and a reopened ten-year

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.