Pakistan Itself Is Exploring Stablecoins While This Debate Is Happening
Now the Pakistani contradiction becomes almost theatrical.
In January 2026, Pakistan signed an agreement with an affiliate of World Liberty Financial to explore the use of the dollar-pegged USD1 stablecoin for cross-border payments. The Nation reported the agreement, and the widely circulated signing photograph shows Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb and Zach Witkoff at the table while Pakistan’s political and military leadership stands behind them.
Al Jazeera later reported a crucial qualification: as of early July, Pakistani officials said there had been no USD1 pilot project, no licences issued and no known transactions through the stablecoin. The MoU remained exploratory.
That distinction matters.
The agreement does not prove USD1 is useful.
Government interest does not prove a product is Shariah compliant.
A photograph with the prime minister does not turn a smart contract halal.
But Pakistan’s state is clearly investigating digital assets at a policy and payments level while one of Pakistan’s most influential Islamic finance voices is reported to have categorically excluded cryptocurrencies, tokens and stablecoins from mal.
This is a fatwa-policy collision Pakistan cannot solve through memes.
Pakistan needs a national digital-assets Shariah working group involving scholars from more than one fiqhi methodology, State Bank monetary experts, Islamic banking practitioners, cryptographers, distributed-systems engineers, cybersecurity specialists, AML investigators, economists and reserve auditors.
Not a television shouting match.
Not four crypto bros explaining blockchain to a mufti in fifteen minutes.
Not a beard versus blue-tick Twitter war.
Actual multidisciplinary ijtihad.
