A Transfer — That Almost Didn't.
My mum wanted to send money to her teacher in Egypt. Payment for lessons, or perhaps something more — the kind of gift you give someone who shaped how you understand your faith.
She used Wise. Or tried to. The KYC process alone was a hurdle for someone who doesn't live inside apps. Then the transfer flagged suspicious on the receiving end. Reversed. Tried again. Flagged again. The back and forth stretched over days — two people, thousands of kilometres apart, frustrated by infrastructure that was supposedly built to help them.
Eventually, the money got there the old way. Someone was travelling to Egypt. They carried it.
I thought about that for a while after.
A Rule — And the World That Quietly Ignored It.
I grew up knowing riba was haram. Interest on loans. The exploitation of debt. It was taught with clarity — this is something a Muslim does not do.
Then I grew up.
To be fair, the choice exists. Malaysian banks offer Islamic alternatives for most financial products — Islamic hire purchase, Shariah-compliant savings accounts, Islamic credit cards. You are, technically, never forced into the conventional system.
But the choice assumes you know to ask for it. And whether the Islamic alternative is substantively different enough to matter — a "profit rate" versus an "interest rate" — is a conversation that scholars themselves haven't fully resolved, let alone the rest of us navigating it on the ground.
My own relationship with it is more complicated now than it was then. I got my first card as an AMEX credit card — ironic, given I'd been resistant to credit on principle. What I learned was something quieter: discipline matters more than avoidance. Understanding the tools is not the same as being owned by them. I clear my monthly statement almost every month. I use 0% instalment plans when they make sense. I'm not endorsing the architecture. I'm just honest about how I navigate it.
There's a longer essay in this somewhere. For now: I live inside the system, eyes open, and I haven't made peace with all of it.
A Contrast — The First Time It Actually Worked.
Working remotely in a global context means getting paid across borders. Early in the space, I was paid in crypto. Off-ramping to fiat is straightforward — the fees are lower than most people expect.
But the sharper contrast came earlier: crypto to crypto. No intermediaries. No KYC friction. A wallet address, a gas fee, a transaction settling cleanly on the other side. When you've watched someone carry cash to Egypt because Wise failed twice, that simplicity hits differently.
The principle felt familiar, even if I couldn't fully articulate why. Something about money moving freely — without a toll at every checkpoint, without a form, without a flag — rhymed with something I'd been taught to want long before I knew what crypto was.
A Hope — Not a Fatwa.
I'm not going to tell you DeFi is halal. I'm not qualified to, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you're doing and who you ask.
What I can say is this: the vision — permissionless access, transparent rails, no intermediary extracting a toll on every transaction — points at the right wound. ZK proofs that attest identity without exposing it. Account abstraction that removes the friction of gas. Transfers genuinely as simple as sending a message. These are being built. I've been close enough to the space for almost five years to say: it's better now than when I started.
My mum's teacher in Egypt deserved a simpler path. Maybe not today. But the people building toward that future are asking the right questions.
That's enough for me to stay.
IN.
Previously — The Muslim Builder's Dilemma