• Muslims explore AI’s role in complementing traditional Islamic scholarship, but it falters in interpreting Qur’anic texts
• While AI offers accessibility, scholars like Dr. Shoaib Malik highlight that its future hinges on earning trust as a complement to human scholars
In a small Leeds apartment, Tawheed Khan opens his laptop rather than his bookshelf when seeking religious guidance. The hospital administrator types his query about proper fasting procedures during long summer days into ChatGPT instead of calling his local imam.
“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” Khan explains, noting that the AI system has learned he follows the Hanafi Sunni tradition and tailors its answers accordingly. “It’s just more convenient.”
Khan represents a growing movement of Muslims worldwide exploring how emerging artificial intelligence can complement the centuries-old tradition of Islamic scholarship—a heritage built upon meticulous study and person-to-person transmission of knowledge.
Last month, this delicate balance between innovation and tradition came into sharp focus when the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) published a Friday sermon containing what it claimed was a verse from Surah 33:10 of the Qur’an. The quote—”and the believing men and women thought good of Allah”—wasn’t actually from that verse at all.
The organization quickly removed the sermon after the error was discovered. While declining to explicitly state what happened, the MCB’s subsequent apology hinted at AI involvement, with assistant secretary-general Mustafa Al-Dabbagh acknowledging the incident “highlighted just how important it is to apply rigorous scrutiny when using emerging technologies to communicate sensitive and nuanced issues of faith.”
Rather than retreat from technology, however, the organization is leaning into education. The MCB plans to host an AI conference on July 19th, bringing together tech experts, community leaders, and Islamic scholars to explore responsible AI use that aligns with Islamic values.
For Inaya Islam, a London-based data scientist, AI entered her religious practice during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Unable to attend in-person Qur’an memorization classes and finding online tutoring financially prohibitive, she turned to Tarteel.ai, an application that “listens” to users recite verses and provides feedback by comparing their pronunciation with recordings by renowned scholars.
“It’s trained on some of the best reciters who have memorizedthe entire Qur’an and have multiple ijazas,” she says, referring to the traditional certificates that authorize teaching Islamic knowledge.
While comfortable using AI for memorization and recitation, Islam draws a clear boundary around interpretation. “An AI model won’t be able to fully consider the nuances or context as well as a scholar,” she insists. “A scholar will have studied from their teachers, and their teachers will have passed advice and knowledge down to them.”
In Bradford, at the Al Balagh Academy, the integration of AI into Islamic education has moved beyond individual use to institutional adoption. Dr. Rafaqat Rashid, the academic director, describes how AI has transformed their operations over the past two years.
“It’s very good as your personal assistant,” Rashid says, explaining how his team uses AI for creating presentations, translating texts, and developing student assessments. The academy has embraced this technological shift so thoroughly that they now offer specialized courses on “mastering ChatGPT as an imam” and applications for Islamic homeschooling—with equal interest from mothers and fathers.
Yet Rashid maintains a critical eye toward the technology’s limitations, particularly when handling classical Islamic literature. In the academy’s tests, AI systems demonstrated error rates as high as 50% when interpreting the Qur’an and other traditional texts.
“Sometimes it gives you certain references and when you look into [the original text] they’re not there,” he notes. “It’s very good at summarizing… It can’t do the actual research. It’s not reliable enough.”
While ChatGPT and similar platforms have only recently entered public consciousness, the academic exploration of AI in Islamic studies has a much longer history. At the University of Leeds, Professor Eric Atwell has been supervising Muslim PhD students researching AI applications for Islamic queries since 2010.
Their early work highlighted a fundamental concern: the margin for error when handling sacred texts must be vanishingly small to be acceptable to believers. However, Atwell sees remarkable progress in recent years.
“It’s just getting better and better,” he says. “Eventually, it will be totally trustworthy.”
Atwell believes the key to reliable AI interpretation lies in constraining these systems to extract information only from trusted Islamic sources, creating a form of digital scholarship that maintains traditional authority while expanding accessibility.
As AI continues to improve, fundamental questions about religious authority loom on the horizon. Dr. Shoaib Malik, who teaches Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh, uses AI for numerous aspects of his teaching and believes the technology’s tendency to “hallucinate” answers will eventually be resolved.
When that happens, Malik suggests we’ll face a more profound challenge: “While I don’t think scholars will become obsolete, I do think we’ll enter a phase where AI-generated insights are taken just as seriously. The real question won’t be whether AI can do it, but whether people trust it more than traditional authority.”
This question of trust lies at the heart of how religious communities navigate technological change. Faith traditions have always adapted to new communication methods—from oral transmission to written texts, from manuscripts to printing presses, and now from books to algorithms.
For Muslim communities worldwide, the current moment represents not just a technological adaptation but a renegotiation of how knowledge is transferred, authority is established, and religious practice is maintained in an increasingly digital world.
As Khan continues to consult his digital imam and Inaya Islam perfects her recitation with algorithmic assistance, they participate in this ongoing dialogue between tradition and innovation—a conversation as old as faith itself and as new as the latest software update.
