Technology, AI, Image-Making and Digital Conduct

1. All knowledge belongs to the Creator

Ayat al-Kursi declares that اللّٰه (ALLAH) alone is the Ever-Living, the Sustainer, that His knowledge encompasses what is before and after creation, and that created beings encompass nothing of His knowledge except what He wills. No database, model or network shares divine knowledge.

Qur’an 96:5 says that اللّٰه (ALLAH) taught the human being what they did not know. Human discovery, engineering and computation remain created abilities and permitted learning; they are not independent rivals to the One who taught humanity.

Each gold Qur’an panel uses the locked Uthmani Arabic catalogue and separately named English translations. The page keeps six categories distinct: direct Qur’anic teaching, authentic hadith, qualified fiqh application, current technical evidence, current law or regulation, and Tawheed Club’s educational guidance. Technology changes quickly; a current technical description is not revelation, and a general fiqh statement is not an automatic verdict for every tool or use.

Tawheed boundary: اللّٰه (ALLAH) alone is the Creator, the Knower of the unseen and the source from whom all created ability and permitted knowledge ultimately come. People build machines from created matter and use faculties they did not originate. An AI system is a tool: it is not divine, prophetic, a rival creator, a moral authority or a source of revelation. Fluent output is not proof of consciousness, wisdom, truth or access to the unseen.

Avoid devotional or inflated language about AI. A model can process patterns at great speed yet still produce false citations, contradictory answers and fabricated detail. It does not become a knower of the unseen because an answer sounds confident. A Muslim may benefit from a tool while refusing to surrender reverence, conscience or final judgement to it.

For adults teaching children: demonstrate with fictional prompts and non-animate sample media. Teach children never to enter a real name, face, voice, school, address, location, medical detail or private conversation into an AI tool. Keep adult-controlled accounts and privacy settings, supervise generated content, explain that convincing output can be wrong, and provide a simple route for reporting anything frightening, sexual, hateful, manipulative or secretive.

2. AI is a tool, not an authority

Qur’an 17:36 forbids following what one has no knowledge of and states that hearing, sight and heart will be questioned. The user remains answerable for relying on or spreading an output; “the system said it” does not transfer responsibility.

International Islamic Fiqh Academy Resolution 258 (3/26): Artificial Intelligence describes AI as programs and machines that simulate aspects of human intelligence, recognises benefits and harms, and treats use as permissible in principle subject to lawful purpose, benefit, harm prevention, protection of rights, security, honesty, documentation and transparency. This is a contemporary institutional fiqh resolution, not a Qur’an verse and not a claim that every product or use is permitted.

NIST Generative AI Profile 600-1 identifies confabulation, privacy, information integrity, security, harmful bias and human–AI configuration among the risks of generative systems. “Confabulation” means confidently presented false or erroneous content. That technical fact explains why verification is necessary; it does not itself issue an Islamic ruling.

A safe hierarchy is clear: revelation governs belief and worship; qualified people interpret and apply specialised knowledge; primary evidence establishes a factual claim; a tool may assist searching, drafting or comparison. Reverse that hierarchy and a convenience becomes a source of error.

Evidence practice: before using or sharing a digital output, write who or what produced it, the original source, the date, the intended use, the people affected, the personal data involved and the consequence if it is wrong. Check the claim against a named primary or authoritative source, inspect the surrounding context, look for independent confirmation and record uncertainty. For a religious claim, locate the complete Qur’an passage or authentic report and ask a qualified human scholar about its application. Do not cite an AI system as though it were the source of sacred knowledge.

3. Truth requires verification and honest disclosure

Qur’an 49:6 commands believers to verify consequential news so that people are not harmed through ignorance and regret follows. The principle applies strongly when generated text, audio, image or video can be created and distributed at scale.

Qur’an 33:70 commands God-consciousness and speech that is sound, straight and appropriate. Presenting generated work as eyewitness evidence, a human quotation or personal scholarship when it is not can violate truthfulness even if the file is visually convincing.

Verification is more than asking the same model twice. Open the cited source, confirm the author and date, read enough context to understand the claim, compare an independent reliable source and label what remains uncertain. A broken link, invented book or plausible quotation is not evidence.

C2PA Content Credentials specifications develops Content Credentials for recording media provenance and change history. Provenance can help a viewer understand origin and editing, but it does not prove that every claim inside the media is true. Absence of credentials also does not automatically prove that content is false. Treat provenance as one clue within a wider verification process.

Evidence practice: before using or sharing a digital output, write who or what produced it, the original source, the date, the intended use, the people affected, the personal data involved and the consequence if it is wrong. Check the claim against a named primary or authoritative source, inspect the surrounding context, look for independent confirmation and record uncertainty. For a religious claim, locate the complete Qur’an passage or authentic report and ask a qualified human scholar about its application. Do not cite an AI system as though it were the source of sacred knowledge.

4. Image-making texts must not be hidden or oversimplified

Sahih al-Bukhari 5950 and Sahih al-Bukhari 5954 contain severe warnings connected to makers of images and imitation of creation. Sahih Muslim 2110a reports Ibn Abbas directing a person who made pictures toward trees and things without souls. These authentic texts deserve complete attention; they must not be erased because modern media are common.

Ruling boundary: authentic reports contain serious warnings about image-making. Qualified scholars differ over how those reports apply to photography, video, animation, digital drawing and AI-generated imagery. This course records the texts and recognised applications without declaring the disagreement imaginary or pretending that an earlier scholar ruled on a technology that did not yet exist. Ask a qualified scholar who understands the exact medium, subject, purpose, audience and harm.

Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta: photography and drawing humans represents an official contemporary view that permits photography and drawings, including animate subjects, subject to content and moral conditions, and expressly describes the issue as disputed. Shaykh Ibn Baz: ruling on photographing animate beings represents a stricter view that includes photography of animate beings within the prohibition except where necessity applies. These are genuinely different applications of the texts.

AI-generated imagery adds new questions: the user supplies instructions, a model generates pixels from learned statistical relationships, source material and likeness rights may be unclear, and the result may fabricate a person or event. Do not claim that the existence of an older ruling automatically resolves every part. Identify the medium, subject, purpose, audience, consent, deception risk and governing scholarly approach.

Tawheed Club uses non-animate imagery as a careful organisational policy. That policy is not permission to accuse every Muslim who follows a recognised qualified view of sin or disbelief.

5. Privacy and attention are trusts

Qur’an 24:27 forbids entering houses other than one’s own without permission and greeting. The verse concerns physical homes, while its respect for permission and private space gives a clear moral frame for digital access; it is not itself a modern data-protection statute.

Do not copy private conversations, photographs, voices, contact lists or documents into a model without authority. Deleting a local message does not guarantee that a third-party service never processed or retained it. Read the current service notice and use the minimum necessary data.

UK Information Commissioner: AI and data protection guidance explains that AI systems using personal data remain subject to data-protection duties, risk assessment, transparency and meaningful oversight. UK Information Commissioner: Children’s code and online privacy describes high privacy by default, minimal collection, restricted geolocation and accessible rights tools for services likely to be used by children. These are current UK regulatory sources, not universal global law.

Attention is also finite. Endless feeds, notifications and persuasive design can displace prayer, sleep, family duties, study and quiet thought. A useful tool serves a defined purpose and then releases the user; it should not train the household to obey every alert.

Digital-safety boundary: never upload passwords, private messages, confidential school or work files, intimate images, health records, children’s identifiers or another person’s data to a public AI service. Never use generated output as the sole basis for medical, legal, financial, safeguarding or religious decisions. Immediate threats, grooming, blackmail, self-harm material, sexual exploitation or credible violence require a trusted adult and the appropriate local professional or emergency route.

6. Build accountable digital conduct

Qur’an 99:7 teaches that whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it. Small online acts—correcting a falsehood, protecting a secret, refusing humiliation or sharing useful knowledge—matter.

Qur’an 99:8 teaches that whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it. A repost, prompt, edit or anonymous comment does not disappear from moral accountability because it happened through a screen.

Sahih al-Bukhari 6018 joins belief in اللّٰه (ALLAH) and the Last Day with speaking good or remaining silent. Online speech remains speech: forwarding, reacting, captioning, cloning a voice and prompting a harmful output can all affect real people.

Use the four lessons in order, complete the mastery check, then use the digital decision and family-safety workbook. The goal is neither panic nor worship of innovation. It is disciplined benefit beneath tawheed, truth and responsibility.

For adults teaching children: demonstrate with fictional prompts and non-animate sample media. Teach children never to enter a real name, face, voice, school, address, location, medical detail or private conversation into an AI tool. Keep adult-controlled accounts and privacy settings, supervise generated content, explain that convincing output can be wrong, and provide a simple route for reporting anything frightening, sexual, hateful, manipulative or secretive.

Evidence practice: before using or sharing a digital output, write who or what produced it, the original source, the date, the intended use, the people affected, the personal data involved and the consequence if it is wrong. Check the claim against a named primary or authoritative source, inspect the surrounding context, look for independent confirmation and record uncertainty. For a religious claim, locate the complete Qur’an passage or authentic report and ask a qualified human scholar about its application. Do not cite an AI system as though it were the source of sacred knowledge.