Monetary debates in Muslim societies are frequently framed as technical disputes over value, stability, and lawful exchange, yet such debates also reveal deeper struggles over authority, legitimacy, and the institutional conditions that make money socially effective. Through thematic historical comparison, early Islamic coinage, Ottoman monetary governance, Gold Dinar advocacy, the Islamic State’s coinage, and state-regulated Islamic finance in Southeast Asia are examined as distinct configurations of religion and monetary power. The analysis differentiates three trajectories: restorative revivalism, sovereignty performance, and institutional adaptation. Gold Dinar advocacy is critically assessed for often treating the material properties of gold and its historical symbolism as sufficient foundations of monetary legitimacy. Historical evidence suggests otherwise: dinar and dirham functioned because they were embedded in taxation, military payment, minting control, legal enforcement, administrative authority, and market networks, while precious metal alone could not guarantee stability, justice, or sustained circulation. Islamic finance represents a different trajectory by translating religious norms into contemporary regulatory, banking, and supervisory institutions, although such adaptation may reduce broader ethical ambitions to formal compliance. The central argument is that monetary legitimacy emerges from the interaction of political authorization, institutional infrastructure, and social recognition. Monetary objects and financial infrastructures therefore operate not merely as economic instruments, but as media through which religious movements collectively mobilize moral claims, organize authority, and imagine alternative political-orders.