Contemporary Fiqh & Emerging Technologies by Dr. Sahibzada Uzair Mahmood Al-Azhari
(President: World Association for Al-Azhar Graduates – Pakistan Branch; Director: Al-Mu'assasah Al-'Ilmiyyah Al-'Asriyyah (IPAMS))
With the meteoric rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT, millions of Muslims are turning to algorithmic bots to inquire about complex legal, theological, and marital rulings. In this timely and critical lecture, Dr. Uzair Mahmood Al-Azhari conducts a rigorous juristic assessment of seeking fatwas from Artificial Intelligence.
The Sacred Nature of Iftaa vs. Data Processing
Dr. Uzair clarifies that an authentic Fatwa in Islamic jurisprudence is not merely retrieving text or matching keywords; it requires living human understanding, discerning the real context of the petitioner (Maqasid ash-Shari'ah), spiritual intuition, and ethical accountability before Allah. An AI model merely generates probabilistic text based on internet data, often hallucinating references and reflecting underlying liberal secular biases.
Key Insights from the Analysis:
- Algorithmic Fallacies & Hallucinations: Documented instances of AI inventing fabricated hadiths and non-existent consensus (Ijma').
- Missing Contextual Empathy: Why pastoral counseling and family fatwas require human emotional wisdom that machines can never possess.
- Permissible vs. Impermissible AI Usage: Leveraging AI for search indexing and linguistics while strictly reserving legal deduction (Ijtihad) for qualified human scholars.
