Newswrap: Islamic lifestyle
IBF Net to launch Sharia-compliant metaverse; Modest fashion brand Leem enters UK market; Dallas Museum of Art opens exhibit “Cartier and Islamic Art”
IBF Net to launch 'world’s first' Sharia-compliant metaverse
Ireland-based Islamic Business and Finance Network (IBF Net), which has Islamic economy platforms for philanthropic, non-profit and for-profit transactions, is planning to expand into a metaverse, the company announced. The metaverse is a 3D virtual world in which users immerse themselves in digital environments. IBF Net’s Sharia-compliant metaverse will have two components, one for learning and the other a marketplace.
“The new initiative is the first-of-its-kind application of metaverse technology to create a marketplace that ensures far higher levels of consumer and investor protection and is also compliant with the faith and belief systems of over one-fourth of the global population,” according to the press release.
A grant from the US-based Algorand Foundation, which is behind the Algorand blockchain network, is enabling development of the metaverse. The project is to give “due consideration to the uniqueness of the Southeast Asian region in terms of its faith, culture, regulatory, and policy environment. If we define metaverse as a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment that would enable people to interact with each other, create assets, play games, work and collaborate with each other, then the factors outlined above would have a critical role in defining its shape in a given society.” The press release added that as the meteverse will be Sharia-compliant, the guiding principles of Islam “will have a perceptible influence on behavioural dimensions in the metaverse.”
According to Mohammed Alim, CEO of IBF Net, “the project specifically has two clear disruptive goals: One, it aims to create an open and meta learning place for acquiring and sharing of knowledge anytime, anywhere; and two, it purports to create an open and meta market place for buying and selling with far higher levels of information and therefore, significantly higher consumer and investor protection. It will reconfigure and convert the present miniature Islamic economy developed by IBF Net, which is a centralized (closed) community-focused system to an open system with far superior features brought in by metaverse technology.”
Digital wealth is a further aim of the project, covering digital assets “from in-game items and virtual land to loan agreements or other complex contracts.” The platform”will steadily move towards creating in aggregate an Islamic DeFi ecosystem.”
Modest fashion brand Leem enters UK market
Saudi Arabian brand Leem is expanding beyond the Middle Eastern market into Europe, the US and Asia. The expansion is starting in the UK, first on retailer Next’s online platform, and with Zalando in July, reported WWD. Funded by private investors, Leem has its own e-commerce website in the Middle East and seven stores in the kingdom, the UAE and Bahrain.
Dallas Museum of Art opens exhibit “Cartier and Islamic Art”
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) has launched a new exhibit titled ‘Cartier and Islamic Art: In search of Modernity’ that will run until September. The exhibit highlights the Islamic art and jewellry works of the French fashion house, reported Business Recorder. The show is being developed in conjunction with Paris’ Museé des Arts Décoratifs, and in partnership with the Maison Cartier. The exhibit will feature “over 400 objects from major international collections, including the Department of Islamic Arts at the Louvre Museum and the Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the DMA”.
