Asking AI About Islam
By Nabeel Ahmad
Muslims around the world are turning to AI chatbots, apps, and chat platforms to understand the Quran, Hadith, and fiqh. A common Muslim, in a perpetual state of dilemma, opens a phone and types a query about what he/she might have asked an Imam, Mufti, or Scholar. Questions like: Is this hadith Authentic? What does this verse of the Quran mean? What’s the ruling on this? What’s the opinion of different schools of thought on this issue?
This is not a fringe activity but becoming a common trend. Artificial Intelligence (AI) answers such queries with confidence, and that feels almost authoritative. This has led to the emergence of the new generation of Islamic AI tools. Daleel AI verifies viral Hadith from social media. Salaam World explains Islamic concepts in 200+ languages. Qatar’s FatwaTok delivers official fatwas with AI summaries. Besides, there are tools like SheikhGPT, QuranGPT, and Ask AiDeen (integrated into the Muslim Pro app), serving believers on a large scale. In the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia’s Presidency of Religious Affairs installed the AI-powered Manara Robot (and its successor, Manara 2) to answer Sharia-based queries in eleven dialects: Arabic, English, French, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Malay, Urdu, Chinese, Bengali, and Hausa.
For Muslims, especially those who don’t know Arabic, who are far away from the traditional Islamic learning centres, or simply who cannot reach a scholar, these tools are the real help. Tools like Tarteel use voice recognition to correct the Quran pronunciation and recitation in real time and also help in memorising. Another tool, Ansari Chat, has become popular as it uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to base its answers directly on the Quran and Hadith.
Where the Worry Lies
However, in the larger discussion, such tools have become a point of discontent among the Islamic Scholars. Some outrightly discourage the use of AI in interpreting answers, while others do not dismiss it, though they clearly flag the risks. Hallucination has been detected among the large language models long ago, but when it comes to Islamic rulings, the risk is potentially higher. It may fabricate a verse from the Quran that does not exist or merge a weak (da’if) narrative with an authentic (sahih) one. A step ahead, researchers have also detected an Islamophobic bias in the results, raising questions about the data fed to the AI models and their possible prejudices.
But there is a much deeper concern: AI erases the richness of Islamic texts and their historical significance. A fatwa or Islamic ruling does not simply rely on the texts, rather it takes into consideration the context, timing, circumstances, and the school of thought. No AI yet carries that weight. These issues are being debated at the major global institutions such as Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, and even the Assembly of Muslim Jurists centred 2026 Imams’ Conference on AI ethics.
Islamic theology has traditionally placed a high priority on (Isnad), the human link that entails an instructor and a community of verifications. AI may retrieve a hadith quicker than any scholar, but can it understand why the hadith matters in that very specific situation? Or the context of the revelation of any verse from the Quran?
As these tools and platforms grow in reach and usability, the concerns among the Muslims community continue to linger: who is responsible when anything goes wrong? Or will the significance of Islamic scholars fade away with time?