Morrad Irsane and Sharene Lee are a husband-and-wife duo, parents of seven and grandparents of one, trailblazing the marriage between Islamic finance and decentralized technology. They previously co-founded Melltoo, a peer-to-peer marketplace acquired by the IKEA group in Saudi Arabia, and turned their attention to a bigger question: why 1.8 billion Muslims still lack financial services that align with their values. Read their decade in review →
Building Instead of Catching Up
For centuries, Muslims helped shape some of the world's greatest advances in science, mathematics, medicine and commerce.
Today, a different pattern often repeats itself. New technologies emerge. Many Muslims stay away until those technologies become widespread and unavoidable. By then, the infrastructure, standards and institutions have already been built by others, leaving Muslims trying to adapt to systems they had little role in shaping.
Rather than arriving after the fact, Muslims should once again become builders, innovators and entrepreneurs, bringing Islamic values to the table from the very beginning.
Morrad believes that cycle has to change. That conviction led him and Sharene to create The Lifedao.
The Lifedao is a community-owned NoBank helping Muslims save, invest, spend and protect without relying on traditional interest-based banking. Using emerging technologies, it aims to make leaving riba practical while demonstrating that Muslims can help build the future of finance rather than simply adapting to it.
Middle East
