In most of the mainstream literature today about digital cash the philosophical roots that trace its emergence are often laid squarely at the door of cyberanarchists, cryptolibertarians and romantic hyperliberals who often flirted with some variant of Austrian Economics. This is especially evident in the otherwise well written history of digital cash by Brunton^[1].

Yet alongside anarchists, libertarians and the romantics were the Murabitun that experimented with alternative currencies. Within Muslim circles, the Murabitun ^[2]are not exactly mainstream but for those acquainted with them, they had a fierce reputation for evangelizing the merits of a gold-based currency to avoid the entangled spider web of fiat currency and the hyper-financialist American Imperial institutions it supports.

Much like Michael Hudson^[3], the Murabitun recognized American Empire was based on a particular conception of monetary consciousness and advocated for Muslims to find a way out. Take for instance the words of one of the movements chief lieutenants, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo:

The Shari’a prohibits the forceful imposition of one single money on the market; what is explicitly stated is that money can be any kind of merchandise which is socially accepted as a means of exchange. If besides this we add to this the character of monopoly inherent in a (paper-)money — without any value as a commodity — whose value is imposed by the state, then it becomes clear the manipulation and acceptance of this system has nothing to do with the deen of Islam. Moreover given that there does not exist a single state in the world where the monetary system of paper^[4]

And here where he puts this even more explicitly in an earlier work in 1991:

You want to be radical? You don't need to blow up the bank, just burn your bank account. For that you need an alternative. What is the alternative? E-dinar ^[5]

This move towards an alternative Islamicate monetary consciousness perhaps reached its zenith in the early 2000s when Vadillo was allowed an audience with the then enthusiastic pan-Islamic government of Malaysia, ^[6] to expound the merits of the e-dinar.^[7] What is interesting is the genesis of the e-dinar involved the UAE (Dubai Islamic Bank) in addition to the Murabitun's relationships with the Malaysian elite - although this was just two decades ago, it feels like an age away now. Vadillo's personal site hasn't been updated since 2013^[8], the e-dinar website itself seems non-operational.

Whatever, one may think of the Murabitun one thing is clear that they amidst all the other pioneers and innovators around digital cash and payment systems in the 90s and early 2000s prior to the emergence of the Bitcoin network were grounding their conception of monetary consciousness not in Austrian economics, libertarianism or anarchy but a particular understanding of the Sacred and classical Islam's stringent prohibitions against usury.

It will perhaps be only a footnote, but I think its a fascinating and worthy one where the Murabitun are very much part of the tapestry of multiple histories around digital cash from the late 70s all the way to Bitcoin and what comes after. Amidst the shenanigans of the Paypal Mafia, cryptoanarchists and cypherpunks of various hues, it was a group of Muslim converts with a certain aristocratic spirit that were staking their claim.

It should also serve as a reminder that the foundations of Islamicate Sovereignty will have to rely on establishing a renewed monetary consciousness that dislocates itself from the Dollar. If the Murabitun were right about anything, it is this very fundamental point.

Footnotes