Artificial intelligence is ruining the Ummah
disclaimer: this isn't about banning AI, but you should still give this a read.
Yep, you read that right.
We Muslims are being ruined every-single-day because of how obsessed we are with AI.
In aya (20:128) of the Quran, Allah says:
“Indeed, in that are signs for those of intelligence.”
Who would have thought the ones He’s alluding to here, those of intelligence, would become stupider by the day, all because of another type of intelligence created... by men?
No more critical thinking, no more effort to check if something’s accurate, no more appreciation of using the working brains Allah gifted us to explore our intellect and creativity, no realization of the importance of fighting excessive and unintentional productivity.
Just prompts aiming to satisfy our addiction to dopamine rushes, to quick money and results, but also, to numbing our cognitive abilities.
And here is what we forget: the struggle of thinking is not a flaw to be optimized away, it is the actual point. The exhaustion of articulating something, the friction of forming an opinion through reading, reflecting, doubting and revisiting, all of this is part of how Allah shapes our intellect, allows us to use our free will and refines our nafs. It’s part of being human really.
In fact, when Iqra, “Read”, was the very first word revealed to the Prophet ﷺ, i don’t think it was to constantly ask AI to sum things up, but to read and learn with our own eyes, minds and efforts.
Seriously though, we don’t realize how having Islam gives us an exceptional competitive advantage in life compared to everyone else and yet, how we choose to simply follow the masses.
For some, it is due to a lack of self-confidence, thinking that a computer having access to all this data will be better than you at pretty much everything. Untrue, but understandable, and obviously, that lack of self-confidence didn’t appear out of nowhere; it is the natural result of years of comparison culture, of feeling like everyone is more articulate, more knowledgeable, more talented than us. AI just hands us a shortcut to escape that feeling, when the discomfort of not being good enough yet was where the growth was supposed to happen in the first place! Skipping it doesn’t make you better, it makes you increasingly dependent on something that will never actually belong to you and isn’t even 100% reliable.
For others, it is a clear lack of spirituality and that is exactly what is making us poor.
Our deen invites us everyday to build deep, authentic, sincere connections, with Allah, with people and with our own selves. It pushes us to be deeply rooted in our fitrah, to be mindful yet ambitious and to seek knowledge in a way that elevates us towards excellence.
Tell me now: do you really think the current use of AI allows us to do that?
Think about what it means to send someone who believes they’re talking to you an AI-generated message or to ask Claude what you think about something before you’ve even tried to figure it out yourself. We are slowly outsourcing not just our work, but our presence and it’s safe to say that this will have more consequences than we’d like to admit. Like, how can you know yourself if you never sit alone with your own mind long enough to hear it?
People have fallen into a laziness that impacts social interactions, have become so arrogant with their time and wealth that they don’t think others deserve to read something written by them, an actual human, or even worse, let them think that they’re the brain behind a text, an image, a concept when they’re not.
Find more of my reflections and advice in my book, The Winds of Change
And just to be clear: I know some will say “AI also requires work, to be able to prompt properly, to create your own agents and systems” etc.
However this is not about not using AI at all, but it is about doing it the right way.
When used mindlessly, AI is just yet another fitna destroying our souls, our society and even our planet. Besides, this “efficiency” is kind of a mirage when the freed up time is just refilled with more noise, because when you think about it, a tool that helps you do more of what you already wish you did less of is not helping you, it is just speeding up a direction you should be questioning.
I also can’t help but thinking of the upcoming generation of Muslim kids who may never know the experience of being bored long enough to develop imagination, of struggling through a problem until they solve it themselves, of forming their own thoughts without a machine making suggestions… If we don’t do anything about it, they’re just all going to look like a bunch of likeminded zombies who literally cannot think without assistance, don’t you think?
Let’s aim for an intentional, limited, conscious use of these tools, one that helps us do the things we struggle with in a pragmatic way, hopefully with an outcome that does more good than harm to the most of us, not to become a robot on autopilot because I can guarantee you this is not what Allah meant for us when He created us.
What are your thoughts on this? Let me know insha’Allah, i’m very curious to know because i know it can be a cleaving topic!
Love and du’as,
Assia