Fiqh of AI & Emerging Technologies

Islamic law has no ready-made ruling on artificial intelligence, and the two easy answers both fail: borrowing a secular framework, or judging all of AI at once. This session offers a better way. It starts with what these systems actually do, from predicting the next word to agents that plan and act with little human supervision, then asks the question everything else depends on: can a machine be held accountable? In Islamic law, no. However capable it becomes, an AI is an instrument, because accountability rests on intention and on the soul, and no amount of capability supplies either. Two practical questions follow. First, when is it right to use AI for a given task, weighing the benefit against the harm and measuring both against the aims of the Sharia? That reasoning is why an AI should not be issuing religious rulings on its own. Second, when something goes wrong, who answers for it: the designer, the company that oversold it, or the person who put it to work? That turns on who overstepped or was careless, not on who acted last. You will leave with a way to weigh each new tool as it arrives, and one caution worth keeping: a mind that hands over every judgment stops getting used.