You absolutely, definitely, mustn't go there...

By ابو مريم October 20, 2025

To preserve its spiritual core, Islam must rearticulate itself in light of synthetic intelligence in order to keep tawḥīd intact in a post-human age.

You absolutely, definitely, mustn't go there...

And We have sent down unto thee the Book in truth, confirming the Book that come before it, and as a protector over it. So judge between them in accordance with what God has sent down, and follow not their caprices away from the truth that has come unto thee. For each among you We have appointed a law and a way. And had God willed, he would have made you one community, but He willed otherwise, that He might try you in that which He has given you. So vie with one another in good deeds. Unto God shall be your return all together, and He will inform you of that wherein you differ.

~ Ma’idah 48

Let’s get right to it - fiqh is dying and AI will kill it. There will not be a revival, at least not in the vision of some new golden age. Rather there are certain risks and dangers that will likely shape the future of Islam in ways we do not yet fully comprehend.

Not long ago I posed a response to @AvdullahYousef regarding the issue of the nature of shariah.

ابو مريم

Sep 5, 2025 09:46

Okay, there’s a lot I could say on this but I’ll try to limit myself to what I think is the core of what Avdullah is getting at which is summarized here:

“But, there’s a point many of these critics have reached that’s beyond the point of insanity. It’s a known goal of the Sharia that prioritizing life itself overrides outward implementation of the religion when the former is under threat.”

This axiom, that preservation of life is fundamental to the Sharia, is not only a case where madhahib diverge but it is not necessarily even the dominate opinion. Yes, their exist differences of opinion within fiqh. This is meant to be a mercy and beautiful thing in our religion but when out of balance harms can occur. As someone who has done their best to practice a madhab - Maliki - and studied with the talib ilm of some of its sharpest scholars in Egypt, UAE, Mauritania, and Algeria, I can confidently say that this issue of prioritizing preservation of life or preservation of religion is debated at the very highest levels. In Maliki fiqh the dominate position is actually preservation of religion and my understanding is that this is the case in other madhahib as well. The scholars have their wisdom in why they hold to divergent opinions and I want to highlight that both sides are valid positions. Where I think judgement can be made is in their outcomes.

Here is where I think the ruling on hijra is an important case study and it’s appropriately framed at the start of the Avdullah’s article. The dominant opinion on hijra is that it is wajib to migrate from the West to Muslim lands. Muslim lands are defined by their ruler being a Muslim (minimum requirement is that they are publicly seen making salat and do not prevent it in their realm). For a Muslim to migrate to a non-Muslim land (dar al-harb) is haram and only permissible if the intention is for dawwah or as an official diplomat of the emir. Any other intention in migration away from Muslim lands is a fitna. For example, to be a refuge from war or fleeing from religious persecution is not an edge case that merits a fatwa and such justifications are invalid. Even the foreign born convert must abandon land and family and make hijra to a muslim nation state.

As you can see this ruling is completely based on preservation of religion, not preservation of life. But what Religion? The way this ruling has inherently been framed is politically motivated. We have had Ikwan in Turkey that can’t migrate to Egypt, Sufis chased out of Wahhabi dominated KSA. Shia had best avoid migrating to Syria and we know Sunnis will avoid Iran. For those of us born in the West like Avdullah and myself it becomes easily clear when we visit Muslim lands that this sectarianism is part of what has kept most emirates preoccupied while the West progressed 2 centuries into the future.

Divide et impera

I really don’t care to get into the flavor of government your Muslim country has, I have enough identical flavors where I live. The point is your Muslim country’s policy and laws are focused on preservation of your version (often ethnic) of the religion and not on the preservation of Muslim lives. Yes not even those of your own citizens.

It does not take must effort to understand how the side of preservation of life sees this ruling on hijra. The sunnah speaks to it in multiple ways with emigration first to Abyssinia and then to Medina both being due to persecution the Muslims faced in Mecca (a third hijra from Mecca also echos similarly of preservation of life being at its foundation). I really don’t think I need to say any more on this other than it should be obvious we have two very divergent opinions on the topic of hijra that are both valid.

Briefly circling back to their merits, which I will clearly state both have, the side preserving religion speaks a conservative tone and the side preserving life a progressive one. Again, not saying either of these is better than the other. My point is that balance is needed and we’ve drifted heavily in the favor of one of these positions over another. And this is just looking at the hukm around hijra which could be considered obscure for many. Are there other rulings that should be revisited with a balanced approach in mind? I leave that for the reader.

I will end with saying I feel deeply for what Avdullah experienced. I too have been in similar situations and found myself asking these questions. Although I’m certain I disagree with elements of what he has written it is clear that the thematic orientation of this article points in a direction I wholeheartedly sympathize with:

“These attitudes aren’t just contrary to ideal Islamic doctrines of treating and caring for your fellow Muslims; they’re an anti-spiritual weapon that actively disenchants and takes you out of your faith in “the Ummah” over time.”

In the spirit of supporting this spiritual rebalancing I think that we need to acknowledge that any path that leads to the cheapening of life itself (human or non) cannot be an Islamic path. The question I invite us all to ask is whether the institutions we have now are leading us to corruption or not. I think most of us will agree that at the least most institutions are not well optimized for success in our current reality. But what can we do to not just make them better but infuse ihsan into them? Our replacement will come, be it with our children or a nuclear Armageddon and we all want that future Ummah to be better than ours right now. I’m not claiming to have answers to these deep questions, I just know that for my part I’m working to build a space for Muslims here on nostr because I see this as a powerful tool for our future. Whether you are prioritizing life or religion, please try to at least be considerate of the other perspective and hopefully in that space we can find a balance together.

View full event

I detailed some elements of the scholarly dialogue that I had some personal experience with and attempted to clarify what I understood at that time to be the heart of the issue which was the prioritization of life vs religion. Having deliberated further over this issue in both private discussions with talib ’ilm and my own devotional reflection, there are additional concerns that I want to address.

With AI coming of age we now have an issue where portions of this debate will take center stage in the public discourse. As utopian as the marketing is, the likelihood that AI will give 2 sats about human life or is even capable of being safely contained is slim. The closer we get to that point the more evident Land’s prediction will become - “nothing human makes it out of the near-future”. We can already see accelerationists like Thiel proposing ideas that the anti-christ/dajjal will be from those who want to preserve the human and hold back AI. The dystopic thought of non-human overlords going terminator on us is also somewhat dajjalic. The point is, if the goal of shariah is to prioritize life in a future where we are questioning the role of the human itself, then there is an existential crisis coming for Islam. Actually, we are already in it.

I don’t think this is avoidable for those holding the other opinion, where preservation of religion takes priority. This side likely suffers from the same fate, as AI will feed off sectarian divides. The real danger though is not from AI, but from fundamentalist positions on either side who will favor either certain ethnicities when it comes to preservation of life or sects in terms of religious preservation. The future of Islam is that it will become more politically exploited and secularized unless it quickly aligns its understanding of shariah with realities of AI technology.

Let me pause here and clarify - I do believe the next few decades are going to see an explosive growth in religious dialogue and practice thanks to AI making discussions around fiqh accessible to the layperson. AI Muftis will totally be a thing and we will likely get some valuable insights from a Hanafi AI model going up against a Hanbali AI or an Ibadi AI one when navigating complex issues for Martian immigrants and governance within Greater Israel. But as this science is democratized, academia will lose its ability to produce the same caliber scholars as before. The addition of AI simply does not mean human intelligence will increase. In fact the potential over-reliance on new super intelligent AI models could bring about a decrease in overall human intelligence. And as AI is predominately in the hands of people who would prefer to use it for their own benefit it should not be surprising to see such forces, both external and internal, make use of Islamic symbols without any connection to or respect for the spirit and principle behind them.

So, how should we deal with this crisis of fiqh and go about re-constructing our conceptual framework of the shariah? To begin, we need to shake the idea that shariah is only a legal regulatory code and remember that it is a comprehensive worldview about the moral use of knowledge. Our primary source of knowledge is of course Divine Revelation of Scripture. Lings keenly points out that the Prophets delivered multiple shariahs to humanity and that of the 124,000 prophets Allah has allowed only a few to remain (between 4-7 depending on how one counts them). This is important because Islam’s shariah has living predecessors that also must adapt to this challenge of AI and it should be expected that Islam will continue to differ from them in the race toward that which is good. In other words, this dialogue has external voices we should be observing - we should not be united with them, but neither are we alone.

To begin by reasserting the context of shariah is one of a dynamic expression of haqq reminds that protections for din & nafs are not the only objectives. Intellect, lineage, and property are also traditionally listed. What has clearly been ignored in hypermodernity is that data is a form of property. Safeguarding truth through data integrity and respect for digital security and privacy must be integrated into our understanding of shariah. The excuse that digital things in cyberspace are not something real, reveals not just the failure to adapt to evolving technologies but is a clear sign of the gross departure from balance that has occurred. Is our religion not supposed to be the middle way (ummatan wasatan)? One look at the scholarly dialogue around bitcoin and crypto and it is clear how unhinged we have become. The challenges that hypermodernity brings are not simply about what we do with these new technologies but also cut to questions at the core of our Muslim identity.

New ontologies must also consider synthetic agencies which have explicitly been designed to act in legal grey areas this past decade. As machinic desire evolves, what is to prevent them from flipping the script and weaponizing humans for this role? Continued dismissal of concern over such dangers both present and on the horizon does not show an engagement with the ummah but an elite, political favoritism trending towards oppression and tyranny. Like it or not, the gates of participation in this dialogue will soon burst open bringing forth a new context for re-evaluating who (or what) can act in these systems. Meanwhile, the cope is real. We no longer have a simple issue of imamah vs khalifah. It should be obvious at this point that both sides of this issue are wrong. Occultation aside, we do not have an Imam today, nor do we have a Khalifah. By Allah’s Will these chains have been broken, yet we still resort to tribal signaling. The solution is in the future, not the past. By continuing to cling to a dead system we have turned our nostalgia into necrophilia where it is more likely we will birth Dajjal than immanentise the Mehdi.

Justice is restorative, not punitive, as its aim is at inner unity and alignment with Divine Providence. If Islam cannot intellectually adapt by integrating AI into its metaphysical tradition, not just its legal structure, then we risk more than just failing to avoid haram.

And Allah knows best.

#islam #muslim #hypermodernity #fiqh #saif #staysaif #accelerationism

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