In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Prayers and salutations be upon the Master of the Messengers ﷺ, and upon his family and Companions. There is no power nor strength except through Allah, the Mighty, the Wise.
The rapid development of technology and the modern tools available in our age have made access to information extraordinarily fast and convenient. This has provided people with alternatives to conventional methods in many different fields. However, sacred knowledge and matters relating to the Dīn remain of extremely serious importance. In particular, the issuing of fatāwā requires conditions in the muftī that cannot be fulfilled by AI.
Among these conditions are: a deep understanding of the issue itself and the circumstances of the questioner; awareness that legal rulings may change with differences in place, time, people, and social customs; the ability to determine the degree of need or necessity connected to the questioner’s situation; and knowledge of the qualifications and restrictions found in the statements of the fuqahāʾ regarding particular rulings—along with many other conditions that require careful attention.
For this reason, Allah, Most High, has commanded anyone seeking knowledge or wishing to know the legal ruling concerning a matter to refer to trustworthy scholars. He states:
“So ask the people of remembrance if you do not know”.
[Qurʾān 16:43]
Commenting on this āya, Imām al-Shaʿrānī (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “The ʿulamāʾ are deputies of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”
It is also narrated from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: “This knowledge will be carried in every generation by its upright people, who will remove from it the distortions of the extremists, the false claims of the impostors, and the interpretations of the ignorant.” Reported by al-Bayhaqī in ‘al-Sunan al-Kubrā’ (§20911).
Imām al-Nawawī (may Allah have mercy on him) commented: “In this ḥadīth, the Prophet ﷺ informs us that knowledge will be protected and preserved, and that its transmitters will be upright. Allah will grant success in every age to just successors who will carry it, removing from it distortion and the like, so that it will not be lost (over time). This clearly affirms the integrity of those who bear it in every generation—and this has indeed occurred;all praise belongs to Allah. And indeed, this (prophecy) is among the signs of Prophethood.”
The ʿulamāʾ have also stated regarding the conditions of a muftī: “A muftī must be legally responsible [mukallaf], Muslim, trustworthy and reliable, free from the causes of sinful conduct and breaches of upright character; he must possess juristic insight, sound intellect, balanced thinking, correct judgment and deduction, and alertness.”
Likewise, the ʿulamāʾ warned against taking knowledge merely from written pages while abandoning qualified scholars. Knowledge should only be taken from one whose qualifications are complete, whose piety is evident, whose learning is well-established, and whose integrity and authority are recognized. Ibn Sīrīn, Mālik, and many others among the Salaf said: “This knowledge is the Dīn, so look carefully from whom you take your Dīn.”
It is not sufficient for someone to be merely well-read in a discipline in order to be fit to teach and transmit it. Along with extensive knowledge of that field, one must possess general familiarity with other ancillary Islamic sciences, since they are all interconnected like a mosaic. He should also have experience, piety, good character, sound intellect, and thorough awareness. Some ʿulamāʾ further argued that knowledge should not be taken from someone whose learning comes only from the pages of books without studying under teachers or a skilled scholar. Whoever learns only from books is prone to textual errors and frequently falls into mistakes and distortions.
Imām al-Shāfiʿī (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “Whoever studies Fiqh solely from the pages of books will squander the legal rulings.”
Throughout Islamic history, the ʿulamāʾ were vigilant in ensuring that seekers of knowledge would not solely rely on books without recourse to scholarly authorities in each respective generation. Hence, it is said that whoever’s teacher is his book, his errors will be more than his correct conclusions. And some ʿulamāʾ remarked that among the greatest calamities is taking the page itself as one’s shaykh.
This, then, is the statement of the ʿulamāʾ concerning those who take their knowledge merely from books. How much more problematic, then, is reliance on unverified sources that operate through systems beyond Islamic scholarly oversight—systems that depend on algorithms drawing from countless inputs, regardless of the reliability of those sources or the credibility of the information they contain.
Etiquette:
A Muslim should exercise caution regarding his Dīn just as he carefully considers matters of his worldly life. We see that when many people fall ill, they do not rely solely on AI without concern about possible mistakes in symptoms, diagnosis, or the appropriate treatment. Instead, they go to a well-known physician—or even several physicians—and ask many detailed questions about their condition. Yet when a matter of Dīn arises, the same person may be careless, taking information from any source without the slightest worry or precaution regarding his Hereafter. Truly fortunate is the one for whom his Dīn is more precious than his worldly affairs.
Imām al-Ghazālī (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “How astonishing it is that a person carefully examines himself and takes precautions out of fear of losing even a small coin, yet does not take precautions out of fear of losing the Highest Paradise and its bliss. This is nothing but a tremendous calamity for anyone who reflects upon it.”
And Allah knows best.
