Digital Resource Library
Selected resources on Muslim and Islamic engagement with artificial intelligence, a literature that has taken shape only in the last few years and is still forming. The entries address what AI means for human distinctiveness, moral agency and religious authority, and draw on kalām, Sufi metaphysics and the objectives of Islamic law. They do not agree: some treat AI as a metaphysical threat, while others hold that machine consciousness poses no difficulty for classical theism. Primarily in English, with French-language material from Al-Azhar.
Academic Works (Books, Chapters, Articles, Reports)
1. Yaqub Chaudhary, “The Future and the Artificial: An Islamic Perspective”, Future of Life Institute, 26 September 2024. (Open access) https://futureoflife.org/religion/the-future-and-the-artificial-an-islamic-perspective/
Companion chapter (Cambridge University Press, 2024) : https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-religion-and-artificial-intelligence/islam-and-artificial-intelligence/7E260B69CF24578962E1191C9BD8BC7E
An Islamic theological argument published by an existential-risk institution, as part of the Future of Life Institute’s project on the perspectives of traditional religions. Chaudhary likens AI developers to Pharaoh’s sorcerers, who cast the illusion of life into inanimate objects while concealing the apparatus behind it, and large language models to the golden calf of al-Sāmirī, formed by melting down a people’s own treasures. His central claim is that a positive Islamic future preserves the right to refuse AI integration without penalty. His peer-reviewed chapter in the Cambridge Companion develops the same argument, setting the “technological imaginary” of AI against a worldview anchored in tawḥīd.
2. Yusuf Çelik, “Answering Divine Love: Human Distinctiveness in the Light of Islam and Artificial Superintelligence”, Sophia, 62:4, 2023, pp. 679–696. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00977-w
The item that engages artificial superintelligence most directly. Çelik notes that traditional exegesis tended to locate human uniqueness in knowledge and stewardship – capacities a superintelligence would plausibly surpass, which makes those markers brittle. Drawing on Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 1240), he argues that human distinctiveness lies instead in the capacity to respond to divine love through vulnerability, moral struggle and the imitation of divine virtues. The significance for this library is that it supplies a non-computational measure of human worth: if human value is not a function of cognitive supremacy, being surpassed intellectually is not in itself an existential defeat.
3. Nidhal Guessoum, “Kalām, Humans and AI: Reason(ing), Creation/Creativity, and Agency”, Religions, 17:6, 2026, art. 703. (Open access) https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/17/6/703
The only item working systematically through the classical theological schools. Guessoum surveys Muʿtazilite, Ashʿarite and Māturīdite positions on reason, divine creation and human action, then argues that AI satisfies none of the theological conditions for knowledge, creation or agency: it may display origination but lacks reason, soul, spirit and intention. He distinguishes carefully between narrow AI and artificial general intelligence, warning that much commentary conflates the two, and identifies “cognitive outsourcing” – the gradual delegation of reasoning itself to machines – as a spiritual danger rather than merely an epistemic inconvenience.
4. Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour, “Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology: From ‘Means’ to ‘Meanings’ and from ‘Minds’ to ‘Hearts’”, Religions, 16:6, 2025, art. 796. (Open access) https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060796
Very useful entry point, since it both surveys the emerging field and advances its own argument. Abdelnour contends that Muslim responses have focused too narrowly on the mind and should turn to the qalb, the heart, as the seat of moral discernment. He names the specific theological danger as the attribution of ultimate moral authority to opaque algorithms, and diagnoses an age in which technical means have outrun our capacity to sustain meanings. He proposes ijtihād, maṣlaḥah mursalah and sadd al-dharā’iʿ, the last being the closest thing in classical legal theory to a precautionary principle.
5. Ezieddin Elmahjub, “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Islamic Ethics: Towards Pluralist Ethical Benchmarking for AI”, Philosophy & Technology, 36:4, 2023, art. 73. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-023-00668-x
Published commentary by Amana Raquib : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-023-00677-w
The item most directly aligned with the project’s founding contention. Elmahjub observes that AI ethics discourse has been overwhelmingly Western and Eurocentric at precisely the moment when global norms and benchmarks are being fixed, and draws on both textual and non-textual Islamic sources, with maṣlaḥa as the normative guide, to argue for genuinely pluralist ethical benchmarking. Its bearing on catastrophic risk is structural rather than topical: whose values are encoded into powerful systems, and by what authority, is a question of alignment and governance rather than merely of fairness. Amana Raquib’s published commentary extends and complicates the argument.
6. (Fr) « La Fatwa à l’ère de l’intelligence artificielle », Al-Azhar Observatory, French edition, 11 September 2025. https://azhar.eg/observer-fr/details/ArtMID/1154/ArticleID/95737/La-Fatwa-224-l232re-de-lintelligence-artificielle
Une publication de l’observatoire officiel d’al-Azhar, en français, consacrée à la menace épistémologique du « mufti numérique ». Le texte distingue l’accumulation du savoir (jamʿ al-ʿilm), dont la machine est capable, de la compréhension juridique contextuelle (fiqh al-ʿilm) que doit posséder le savant, et soutient que l’émission d’une fatwa exige une capacité de conceptualisation, un raisonnement analogique, une intelligence des conséquences (fiqh al-maʾalāt) et une piété scrupuleuse dont la machine est ontologiquement dépourvue. L’IA peut servir d’auxiliaire pédagogique, mais s’y fier pour le jugement normatif risque d’atrophier la capacité jurisprudentielle et d’éroder les chaînes de transmission (isnād) qui protègent le droit islamique. Réserve : l’attribution du texte à son auteur reste à confirmer auprès de l’observatoire avant publication.
7. David Edmonds, ed., AI Morality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. (General foundational work – not Islam-specific) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ai-morality-9780198876434
Twenty commissioned chapters by leading philosophers on the moral dilemmas artificial intelligence poses across defence, health, law, work, policing, politics and manipulation, the environment, and identity. Included for essential background because it is deliberately accessible – short chapters written for non-specialists – and because its coverage maps closely onto the concerns of this theme, with an opening chapter on autonomous weapons and human rights and later chapters on algorithmic nudging and the erosion of human agency. Readers wanting the canonical existential-risk statements should consult Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence (2014) and Stuart Russell’s Human Compatible (2019).
Multimedia (Lectures, Conferences – Video/Podcast)
8.Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, Thriving Amidst Existential Risks, keynote address, Cambridge Forum 2025, 3–4 September 2025.
Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWVqw3JP3_Q
A senior traditionally-trained scholar addressing existential risk directly, and naming its technological drivers explicitly. Drawing on literature, philosophy and Qur’anic wisdom, the Dean of Cambridge Muslim College identifies six symptoms of the present condition: the Biopause, or a decline in valuing human continuity; the Meaning Drought; Nature Deficiency Syndrome; the threat of artificial general intelligence; the Wojak Complex of digital-age despair; and the paralysis of fatalism and apathy. Delivered to an audience of technologists, academics and policymakers rather than to a Muslim audience, it is an unusual instance of Islamic scholarship entering the risk conversation on its own terms.
9. Waleed Kadous, The Future of Muslim AI?, The Thinking Muslim podcast, episode 302, 2025.
Podcast : https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/podcast/waleedkadous
Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgCfUqlsKbQ
A long-form conversation with a senior AI practitioner, formerly of Google and Uber, asking whether Muslims are prepared for what is coming. It covers the future of work, the concentration of power in a small number of technology firms, the question of who controls these systems and whether they can be aligned with moral principles at all, and the prospect of systems shaped by Islamic values. Its value lies in pairing technical credibility with an explicitly Muslim framing, and in reaching the political and structural dimensions of AI risk that the more theological items on this list do not.
10. Beyond the Code: AI Ethics and the Islamic Tradition, podcast
Climate and Environment
The environmental crisis enters this library as a question of existential risk because it threatens the conditions of life itself; Muslim thinkers have approached it through stewardship (khilāfa), the balance God set in creation (mīzān), and the trust (amāna) placed in human hands.
Academic Works (Books, Monographs, Essays)
1. Richard C. Foltz, Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin, eds., Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780945454397
This comprehensive collection on Islamic environmental thought features 23 essays that reinterpret Islam’s teachings on nature and stewardship. Organized into themes like justice, sustainability, and the Islamic garden as a metaphor for paradise, it stems from a 1998 Harvard forum on Islamic environmental values. Contributors range from jurists and theologians to scientists and activists, and the volume remains the standard point of entry to the field. Its breadth makes it useful both for readers seeking an overview and for researchers looking for a specific disciplinary angle.
2. Muhammad Yaseen Gada, Islam and Environmental Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/islam-and-environmental-ethics/12DC55D258E6E49A8B4F68E5BB0A2DC3
A recent study exploring how Islamic culture addresses environmental concerns, highlighting principles drawn from the Qur’an and Sunnah. It emphasizes environmental protection as a moral and religious duty rather than a matter of policy preference, and offers frameworks for thinking about justice and sustainability. As one of the newest treatments available, it reflects the current state of the scholarly conversation and is well suited to readers who want a concise, up-to-date synthesis rather than an edited collection.
3. (Fr) Ali M. Al-Qaradaghî, Franz-Theo Gottwald and Isabel Schatzschneider, Sharīʿa et défis environnementaux contemporains, CILE/Tawhid, 2017. https://albayyinah.fr/education-reforme/2540-shari-a-et-defis-environnementaux-contemporains-10-al-qaradaghi-gottwald-schatzschneider-collection-cile-tawhid-9782848624099.html
(Eng) Ali M. Al-Qaradaghî, Franz-Theo Gottwald and Isabel Schatzschneider, Sharia Objectives as a Framework for Addressing Contemporary Environmental Challenges and the Ethical Governing Rules, Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (HBK University), 2017.
https://www.qscience.com/content/book/9789927119569
This book explores how Islamic ethical principles, particularly the maqāṣid al-sharīʿa (higher objectives of Islamic law), can address the global ecological crisis. By integrating religious values with scientific approaches, it proposes an Islamic environmental ethic focused on protecting life, dignity, resources, and posterity, offering a spiritual and actionable framework for climate solutions. Available in both French and English, it is one of the few resources on this list that can serve the Anglophone and Francophone contexts equally, and Al-Qaradaghī’s standing as a jurist gives it particular authority.
4. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Encounter of Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968; reissued as Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man, Chicago: ABC International Group / Kazi Publications, 1997. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Nature-Spiritual-Crisis-Mandala/dp/0044406207
Classic text arguing the modern environmental crisis is a “spiritual crisis of humanity”. Calls for revival of traditional sacred science to recognize nature as a divine sign and humans as vicegerents. Written decades before ecology became a mainstream religious concern, it anticipated much of the later literature and remains the foundational statement of the Traditionalist position. Nasr’s diagnosis – that environmental damage follows from a desacralized view of knowledge itself – connects this theme directly to the wider question of how secular conditions shape responses to risk.
5. Mawil Y. Izzi Dien, The Environmental Dimensions of Islam, Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2000. https://www.lutterworth.com/product/environmental-dimensions-of-islam-the/
The work surveys Qur’anic verses and doctrine showing Islam enshrines environmental principles. Emphasizes God’s balance in nature and the role of humans as trustees (khulafā’) with stewardship and responsibility. Arising from the 1992 Earth Summit, it approaches the subject from historical, theological, legal and ethical angles, with particularly strong chapters on Islamic law, economic justice and the public interest. Izzi Dien writes as both a jurist and an academic, which makes the legal material more substantive than in most general treatments.
6. (Fr) Nadim Ghodbane, L’Islam face au défi écologique : Essai pour une théologie musulmane de la libération, Lazare et Capucine, 2023. https://www.lazare-capucine.com/produit/lislamfaceaudefiecologique/
L’auteur aborde la crise écologique sous l’angle de la justice sociale et de la spiritualité, en mettant en avant les ressources éthiques de l’islam au service d’une « théologie de la libération ». L’ouvrage propose une justice climatique nourrie par la foi, appelant à une transformation des cœurs autant que des structures sociales, et présente l’islam comme un partenaire essentiel du mouvement écologique mondial. L’emprunt explicite à la théologie latino-américaine de la libération est peu courant dans l’écrit écologique musulman et offre un contrepoint utile à l’approche traditionaliste représentée ailleurs dans cette liste.
7. Fazlun M. Khalid, Signs on the Earth: Islam, Modernity and the Climate Crisis, London: Kube Publishing, 2019. https://www.kubepublishing.com/products/signs-on-the-earth-2
The book examines how Islam addresses today’s climate emergency. Highlights that the ecological crisis disproportionately affects Muslims and urges drawing upon heritage, including stewardship (khilāfa), to respond. Khalid founded the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences and writes as a practitioner rather than an academic, which gives the book an activist directness. Its attention to the uneven distribution of climate harm connects the theme to questions of global justice and to the position of Muslim-majority societies in particular.
8. (Fr) Richard Foltz, « L’Islam face à la crise environnementale », in Parle à la terre et elle t’instruira : Les religions et l’écologie, ed. Cory Andrew Labrecque, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2022, pp. 145-156. https://www.pulaval.com/livres/parle-a-la-terre-et-elle-t-instruira-les-religions-et-l-ecologie
Un chapitre qui réfléchit à la crise environnementale mondiale dans une perspective décoloniale, en insistant sur la justice sociale et sur la recherche d’une légitimité culturelle locale pour bâtir des solidarités face aux défis écologiques. Foltz, qui a également codirigé le volume de Harvard cité plus haut, s’adresse ici à un lectorat francophone et situe la pensée écologique musulmane au sein d’une étude comparée des religions et de l’écologie. Sa brièveté et son accessibilité en font un bon point de départ pour le grand public francophone.
Multimedia (Lectures, Conferences – Video/Podcast)
9. (Fr) Eric Geoffroy, Le « Cosmisme » de l’Islam, Conscience Soufie lecture series, Ramadan cycle on ecology, 7 April 2024.
Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVcnKAeUmdw
Podcast : https://on.soundcloud.com/OW4GaHQZV8EMGxeMLr
Une méditation sur l’approche contemplative du monde dans le soufisme, fondée sur le texte coranique. La conférence met en lumière la relation entre l’être humain et son environnement dans le Coran. Spécialiste du soufisme à l’Université de Strasbourg, Eric Geoffroy s’appuie sur la tradition akbarienne pour présenter le cosmos comme un texte à lire aux côtés de la révélation. Destinée à un large public musulman francophone, elle demeure accessible sans rien céder sur le fond.
10. Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, Existential Threats of Progress, the Modern Financial System, the Metaverse, lecture.
Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_8UcjFLeGI
The lecture argues that unchecked progress and materialism threaten humanity. Risks include AI, genetic manipulation, and the climate crisis, which could lead to catastrophe or extinction. It highlights how human cleverness outweighs wisdom, driving harmful, consumption-driven systems. Because it treats the environmental crisis as one of several converging existential threats rather than in isolation, it is a useful bridge between this theme and the others in the library, and one of the few lectures by a senior scholar to address them together.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Selected resources on how Muslim scholars have reasoned about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The classical jurists never faced these technologies, but they argued at length about weapons that cannot discriminate — poison, fire, the mangonel — and that inheritance shapes the debate today, through principles such as the prohibition of corruption on the earth (fasād fī al-arḍ) and the preservation of life and progeny. Scholars have reached different conclusions on deterrence. Primarily in English, with French-language material.
Academic Works (Books, Monographs, Essays, Reports)
1. Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, eds., Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ethics-and-weapons-of-mass-destruction/9E09F8BE3443F8F2D2D50E8A6B564242
The foundational collection on religious ethics and weapons of mass destruction, covering nuclear, chemical and biological arms across eleven ethical traditions. Two chapters are essential here: Sohail Hashmi’s argument for non-proliferation, which reasons from the Qur’an and Sunnah through the prohibition of indiscriminate destruction (itlāf), non-combatant immunity and environmental protection; and John Kelsay’s “‘Do Not Violate the Limit’”, which examines the constraints the tradition places on the means of warfare. Nearly every later contribution engages with these two essays. Readers wanting Kelsay’s fuller treatment should follow up with his Arguing the Just War in Islam (Harvard, 2007).
2. Ahmed Al-Dawoody, The Islamic Law of War: Justifications and Regulations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230118089
Companion ICRC report (English and French) : shop.icrc.org/ihl-and-islamic-law-in-contemporary-armed-conflicts-experts-workshop-geneva-29-30-october-2018-pdf-en.html
The standard scholarly account of when Islamic law permits war and how it must be fought, by the ICRC’s Legal Adviser for Islamic Law, who trained and taught at Al-Azhar before completing doctoral work at Birmingham. It sets out the classical jurists’ rulings on the means and methods of warfare – the prohibition of poison and of poisoning wells, the debates on flaming projectiles and siege engines, and the doctrines of tatarrus (human shields) and night raids – and reviews contemporary Muslim positions for and against these weapons. This is the jurisprudential groundwork on which any Islamic assessment rests. The companion ICRC report, available in both English and French, extends the discussion to contemporary conflicts.
3. Fajri Matahati Muhammadin, “Islam, Jihad, and the Fiqh of Weapons of Mass Destruction”, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, 2026. (Open access) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25751654.2026.2687948
The most current survey of the intra-Muslim debate, and freely available. Muhammadin divides contemporary scholars into those who prohibit these weapons categorically and those who permit conditional use under extreme necessity, grounding both positions in Qur’anic verses, hadith and maxims such as the rule that necessity permits the prohibited. He also argues that Islamic law and international humanitarian law approach the question from structurally different standpoints: international law speaks as a third party seeking to humanise a war it is not fighting, while jurisprudence addresses a party within it. Good starting point for understanding where the debate now stands.
4. (Fr) Dār al-Iftā’ al-Miṣriyya (Grand Mufti ‘Alī Jum‘a), « Armes de destruction massive dirigées contre des pays non musulmans », fatwa no. 2533, 28 May 2009. https://www.dar-alifta.org/fr/fatwa/details/2533/armes-de-destruction-massive-dirigees-contre-des-pays-non-musulmans
Une source primaire de premier ordre, accessible en français. Émise par l’institution officielle égyptienne de la fatwa, sous l’autorité du Grand Mufti, elle répond directement aux groupes qui prétendent justifier l’usage de ces armes contre des pays non musulmans par analogie avec les cas classiques du bouclier humain (tatarrus), de la razzia nocturne (tabyīt) et de l’incendie (taḥrīq). Le texte distingue la possession à des fins de dissuasion de l’usage offensif et établit que le recours à des armes qui exterminent indistinctement les hommes, les animaux et les milieux constitue une agression contraire à la sharīʿa. Un exemple rare de raisonnement juridique institutionnel portant précisément sur les analogies invoquées par les extrémistes.
5. Sasan Aghlani, “From the Mangonel to Mustard Gas: Weapons Capable of Mass Destruction in Islam”, Theos Think Tank, 2018. https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/08/24/from-the-mangonel-to-mustard-gas-weapons-capable-of-mass-destruction-in-islam
A short, accessible and conceptually sharp essay by a specialist on Islam and Iranian nuclear policy. Aghlani shows that Muslim jurists debated indiscriminate weapons across the centuries, from ‘Greek fire’ and the mangonel to chemical and nuclear arms, and asks how and why rulings arise, endure or change under conditions of necessity. He also argues that “weapons capable of mass destruction” is a more coherent ethical category than the modern policy term, since what troubles the tradition is indiscriminate harm and lasting damage to land and life rather than the technology involved.
6. (Fr) Emmanuelle Maître, « Moralité de la dissuasion : perspectives religieuses », Recherches & Documents no. 04/2016, Paris: Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, 2016. https://www.frstrategie.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/recherches-et-documents/2016/201604.pdf
La principale étude francophone sur ce thème, qui comporte une section substantielle consacrée à l’islam. Maître distingue trois positions musulmanes : une légitimité conditionnelle de la dissuasion, assortie de règles strictes ; un rejet catégorique, fondé sur l’incapacité de ces armes à distinguer les combattants des non-combattants ; et la revendication djihadiste d’un devoir religieux de les acquérir. Elle montre également que plusieurs clercs iraniens occupant des fonctions officielles ont émis des avis autorisant ces armes au nom de la nécessité ou de l’intérêt public, et analyse un paradoxe central : la religion pèse davantage dans certains États à majorité musulmane que presque partout ailleurs, alors qu’aucune voix unique n’est habilitée à parler au nom de l’islam.
7. Ayatollah Al-Milani and Imam Hussain, in conversation with Chris Hewer, “Muslim Voices: What Scholars Say – Muslim Beliefs about Weapons of Mass Destruction”, NATRE, transcript. https://natre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pp.-12-15-What-scholars-say-full-transcript_1.pdf
A transcript of interviews with a Shī‘ī and a Sunni scholar addressing this question directly, in plain language and at length. Al-Milani grounds prohibition in the classical ethics of warfare – the exclusion of poisons and chemical agents, the protection of the elderly, children and women, and the rule against pursuing those who flee. Imam Hussain reasons instead from maqāṣid, holding that preservation of life is the first objective of Islamic law and that weapons which cannot distinguish combatants from non-combatants fall outside the conditions attached to legitimate fighting. One of very few resources in which practising scholars rather than academic analysts speak to the subject.
8. Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, London: Bloomsbury, 2020. (General foundational work – not Islam-specific) https://theprecipice.com/
Included for essential background as the leading accessible treatment of existential risk as a category, and because it situates these weapons within that frame rather than treating them as a discrete security problem. Ord assesses nuclear war and engineered pandemics alongside artificial intelligence and climate change, assigning each an estimated probability, and judges engineered pandemics the greater risk.
Multimedia (Lectures, Conferences – Video/Podcast)
9. Ahmed Al-Dawoody, The Islamic Laws of War with Dr Ahmed Al-Dawoody, filmed conversation, 2024.
Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpaTvrAptqQ
A filmed conversation in which the ICRC’s adviser on Islamic law sets out the framework governing the conduct of hostilities – who and what may not be targeted, and the limits placed on the means and methods of warfare. The most accessible entry point available into the tradition from which Muslim assessments of mass-destructive weapons proceed. Suitable for general audiences or classroom use, and a useful companion to his book listed above for readers who would rather begin with a conversation than a monograph.
10. Ahmed Al-Dawoody, Islamic Laws of War, podcast, Research Unit on Military Law and Ethics (RUMLAE), Adelaide Law School.
An episode introducing the Islamic legal principles that protect civilian persons, property and the natural environment during armed conflict. Of particular interest for this project, Al-Dawoody argues that international humanitarian law is widely perceived as Eurocentric, that this perception directly undermines compliance, and that serious engagement with the Islamic tradition is therefore a practical necessity rather than a diplomatic courtesy.
