AI-P06 — AI for Islamic Studies and Religious Institutions

Course Code: AI-P06  |  School: School of Artificial Intelligence  |  Cluster: Level 3 — Applied & Sectoral Practice

Level: Intermediate  |  Duration: 5 weeks · 18–22 learning hours  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Islamic scholarship has a long and highly developed apparatus for handling questions of transmission, authority and reliability. That apparatus is directly relevant here, because a generative model is, from the standpoint of the tradition, an unattributed transmitter with no chain of transmission and no accountability. The tradition already knows what to do with such a source: it is not accepted as authority.

The course therefore approaches machine assistance from within the discipline rather than from outside it. It examines where these tools are genuinely useful to scholars and institutions — searching large corpora, working across Arabic, Malay, Ottoman and other languages, cataloguing manuscripts and library holdings, drafting administrative and educational material, preparing translations for scholarly checking — and where they must not be used, namely in the issuing of religious rulings, the attribution of positions to scholars, and the generation of text presented as tradition.

Considerable attention is given to institutional risk. A mosque, madrasah, fatwa council or Islamic university that publishes a machine-generated ruling or a fabricated hadith attribution damages something that cannot be repaired by correction. Learners produce an institutional policy and a set of scholarly workflows that keep the authority structure intact.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Relate the tradition’s criteria for transmission and authority to the epistemic status of machine-generated text.
2. Use corpus search and multilingual assistance for scholarly work while verifying every citation against the primary source.
3. Identify fabricated or misattributed textual references, including hadith attributions, and explain the verification route.
4. Design workflows in which machine assistance supports translation and cataloguing without displacing scholarly judgement.
5. Draft an institutional policy stating clearly that rulings and religious authority remain with qualified persons.
6. Prepare educational and administrative material with assistance, disclosed appropriately.

Who this course is for

Lecturers and researchers in Islamic studies, staff of Islamic universities and institutes, librarians and manuscript curators, administrators of mosques, madrasahs and fatwa bodies, and publishers of religious material.

Prerequisites

Training or substantial experience in Islamic studies. Working knowledge of Arabic is strongly recommended for the textual exercises. AI-F03 recommended for understanding why these systems fabricate.

Syllabus

Module 1 — Transmission, authority and an unattributed source

Focus. The tradition’s own framework for evaluating what may be relied upon: chains of transmission, the reliability of transmitters, and the requirement of attribution. What that framework implies about text with no provenance.

Lessons. 1.1 Transmission and the criteria of reliability. 1.2 Attribution as a condition of use. 1.3 A model as a transmitter without a chain. 1.4 Where the tradition already has the answer.

Core reading. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, 2nd edition (London: Oneworld, 2017), chapters 3–4. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2003), chapters on the sources.

Deliverable. Position paper relating the tradition’s criteria of reliability to machine-generated text.

Module 2 — Fabrication and misattribution

Focus. The characteristic error profile of generative systems on religious material: plausible but non-existent hadith, misattributed juristic positions, invented citations to classical works. The verification route for each.

Lessons. 2.1 Invented traditions and how they read. 2.2 Misattributed juristic positions. 2.3 Fabricated citations to classical works. 2.4 Verification against printed and manuscript editions.

Core reading. Brown, Hadith, chapters 5 and 8. Ziwei Ji et al., “Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generation”, ACM Computing Surveys 55, no. 12 (2023).

Deliverable. Verification exercise: ten machine-produced references checked against primary sources, with findings.

Module 3 — Corpus work, language and cataloguing

Focus. The legitimate and substantial gains: searching large textual corpora, cross-language work, manuscript cataloguing and metadata, and preparing draft translations for scholarly correction.

Lessons. 3.1 Corpus search and its limits. 3.2 Arabic and regional language processing. 3.3 Manuscript cataloguing and metadata. 3.4 Draft translation for scholarly checking.

Core reading. Nizar Y. Habash, Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing (San Rafael: Morgan & Claypool, 2010), chapters 1–3. Wael B. Hallaq, Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), chapters 1–2, for the textual apparatus being catalogued.

Deliverable. Workflow specification for one scholarly task, with the human checking point defined.

Module 4 — Authority, digital religion and the public

Focus. How digital media has already reshaped religious authority, and what happens when an authoritative-sounding answer is available instantly from a source with no standing. Institutional communication in that environment.

Lessons. 4.1 Digital media and the diffusion of authority. 4.2 The public’s use of chatbots for religious questions. 4.3 Institutional response and pastoral duty. 4.4 Communicating without amplifying.

Core reading. Gary R. Bunt, Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments are Transforming Religious Authority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), chapters 1–3. Dale F. Eickelman & Jon W. Anderson (eds), New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere, 2nd edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), introduction.

Deliverable. Communication note for your institution addressing public use of these tools for religious questions.

Module 5 — Institutional policy

Focus. Drafting policy for an Islamic institution: permitted administrative and educational use, prohibition on rulings and attributions, disclosure, and the preservation of scholarly authority.

Lessons. 5.1 Permitted administrative and educational use. 5.2 Prohibited use: rulings, attributions, generated tradition. 5.3 Disclosure requirements. 5.4 Approval and review by qualified scholars.

Core reading. Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, 3rd edition, chapters on ijtihad and fatwa. UNESCO, Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Paris: UNESCO, 2021).

Deliverable. Final submission: institutional policy, verification workflow and communication note.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Fidelity to the discipline: are the tradition’s own criteria applied accurately rather than gestured at?
2. Verification thoroughness: is every reference checked against a primary source, with the edition identified?
3. Preservation of authority: does the policy keep rulings and attributions with qualified persons, without ambiguity?
4. Institutional usability: could a mosque, madrasah or university adopt this policy as written?

Reading list

Core. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, 2nd edition (London: Oneworld, 2017). Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2003).

Tradition and law. Wael B. Hallaq, Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Bernard G. Weiss, The Search for God’s Law: Islamic Jurisprudence in the Writings of Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992).

Digital religion. Gary R. Bunt, Hashtag Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Dale F. Eickelman & Jon W. Anderson (eds), New Media in the Muslim World, 2nd edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).

Technical and policy. Nizar Y. Habash, Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing (San Rafael: Morgan & Claypool, 2010). Ziwei Ji et al., “Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generation”, ACM Computing Surveys 55, no. 12 (2023). UNESCO, Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2021).

All items are published works identifiable by author, title and publisher. Learners obtain them through an institutional library or the publisher. The Academy does not distribute copyrighted texts.

Academic integrity and use of AI

Generative tools may be used in producing assessed work under three conditions. Use must be disclosed in a short statement appended to each submission, naming the tool and the task it performed. Any factual or technical claim originating from a generative tool must be verified against a citable source before it enters assessed work, and the verification must be evidenced. The analytical judgement in each artefact must be the learner’s own and must be defensible in a short follow-up. This course does not train learners to produce religious rulings. Any submission presenting machine-generated text as a ruling, a hadith, or the position of a named scholar is refused.

Instructor: pending owner confirmation. Pricing: pending owner approval. Reference list verified against publisher records; any later addition is marked for verification before publication.