A London mosque has announced that it has successfully reached and exceeded its target of donations over the Ramadan period which consisted mainly of cryptocurrency, according to Bitcoinist.
Bitcoin News reported in May that the first mosque for Turkish Cypriots in the UK, the Masjid Ramadan, had decided to accept Ethereum in order to carry out essential repairs.
Leaders at the mosque made the decision in May to accept the cryptocurrency as part of the Muslim observance of Zakat, the annual donation made by all of that faith. They set a target of GBP 10,000 for the renovations and invited those with cryptocurrency to donate in the hope that the community would come to the rescue.
The final donation tally came to GBP 13,983 (USD 18,511) consisting of 24 donations from around the world. Mosque chairman Erik Gurney was pleased to announce that the call for cryptocurrency has been a great success as it made up the larger part of the donation, with only GBP 3,460 (USD 4,582) being received in cash. Gurney stated:
“Many people at the mosque were initially skeptical about us accepting this new money, but the fact we received four times more in cryptocurrency donations shows how important it is to be open to these new digital currencies.”
The mosque decided to take the crypto route for donors once it partnered up with London start-up Combo Innovation. It had established that such donations were not in violation of Sharia law which was a concern to some at the time.
At a recent conference in Bahrain earlier this year, leading Islamic scholars decided that Bitcoin and other digital currencies fell into the category of ribawa. This means that cryptocurrency must be exchanged in equal measure, and with immediate transfer of possession, to avoid breaking Sharia law.
Masjid Ramadan managed to observe the law by ensuring that donations were transferred straight from the mosque website to the bank’s cryptocurrency hard wallet before being converted to sterling.
There is still some debate whether cryptocurrency and ribawa can be in tandem when it comes to Sharia law and some clerics have continued to express their own concerns. The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs has declared:
“Buying and selling virtual currencies is not compatible with religion at this time because of the fact that their valuation is open to speculation, they can be easily used in illegal activities like money laundering and they are not under the state’s audit and surveillance.”
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