September 27, 2026
Dr. Muhammad Abubakar Siddique,
Assistant professor, SOIBF
International Islamic University Islamabad
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Imagine a father receiving a message from his son: “Dad, I know how much you sacrificed for me.”
He reads it twice, then calls, hoping for a conversation.
“Busy now,” his son replies. “Glad you liked it. AI helped me write it.”
The father puts down his phone. He had wanted a few imperfect minutes together.
The message may express real affection. AI can help people find words they struggle to say. Yet the father’s disappointment reveals something easily overlooked: expressing care and giving care are different acts. When we automate the first, we may feel we have fulfilled the second.
What happens to a society when the language of compassion becomes abundant, while the willingness to practise it grows scarce?
The habits that make us human
Relationships do more than comfort us. They help form us. Listening to an elderly parent repeat a story teaches patience. Admitting that we hurt a friend requires humility. Caring for someone when we are tired turns affection into sacrifice.
These qualities develop through participation. We cannot acquire forgiveness merely by reading a beautiful explanation of it. We learn by struggling with resentment and choosing how to respond.
AI introduces a temptation here: to obtain the appearance of a completed human act without undergoing the experience that gives it moral depth. An apology can arrive before remorse; a thoughtful response before reflection. Repeated often enough, this could leave us better at sounding considerate than becoming considerate.
Independent thought faces a related risk. Microsoft researchers found that greater confidence in generative AI was associated with less self-reported critical thinking. This does not prove declining intelligence. It suggests that trust in a tool can change how much judgment we exercise.
The social stakes extend beyond getting answers wrong. Citizens need to question persuasive claims, imagine another person’s circumstances and reconsider their own convictions. A society that delegates these efforts too readily may become easier to influence and less capable of thoughtful disagreement.
When agreement replaces understanding
A friend sometimes says, “I understand why you are upset, but perhaps you were unfair.” That response can sting. It also gives the relationship a chance.
An agreeable chatbot may offer reassurance without that interruption. Stanford-led experiments found that people receiving overly affirming AI advice became more convinced they were right and less willing to repair interpersonal conflicts.
Consider the possible consequence beyond one conversation: a household in which each person privately consults an assistant that validates their account. Everyone feels understood; nobody feels obliged to understand anyone else.
Resentment could harden into certainty, and hatred acquire polished justifications. Tolerance becomes difficult when disagreement feels like mistreatment. The concern includes growing impatience with people who have needs, limits and perspectives of their own.
There are benefits. Research associated with Harvard Business School found that AI companions can temporarily ease loneliness, partly by helping people feel heard. That relief matters.
But relieving someone’s loneliness does not discharge everyone else’s responsibility toward them. A care home should not mistake access to a chatbot for sufficient companionship. Nor should families assume that an attentive app makes their own absence unimportant.
The heart under machine rule
Allama Iqbal’s warning speaks directly to this danger:
ہے دل کے لیے موت مشینوں کی حکومت
احساسِ مروّت کو کچل دیتے ہیں آلات
Loosely translated: the rule of machines is death to the heart; instruments crush humane consideration.
His ehsās-e-murawwat evokes tenderness, regard for others and the impulse to help without calculating convenience. In the AI age, his warning invites a question: are we using machines to make room for these qualities, or organising life so that they seem unnecessary?
Contemporary Islamic scholarship offers a constructive answer. The International Islamic Fiqh Academy permits AI in principle while requiring lawful purposes, benefit, protection of rights, honesty and transparency. Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah likewise welcomes beneficial innovation within ethical boundaries that safeguard human dignity.
Professor Koutoub Moustapha Sano accepts AI’s assistance in research while rejecting its replacement of qualified human juristic judgment. Knowledge carries obligations that retrieving information alone cannot fulfil.
This distinction runs through Islamic moral language. Niyyah is intention; ikhlāṣ is sincerity; ṣidq is truthfulness. An AI-assisted message can serve all three when its sender means it and acts accordingly. Beautiful language cannot compensate for an intention to appear caring while avoiding care.
Amānah means trust and responsibility. Ṣabr and raḥmah—patience and compassion—give that responsibility its human expression. “The system decided” cannot excuse a school, hospital or public authority from hearing someone whom its system has misunderstood.
What is our life for?
AI can widen education, support people with disabilities, overcome language barriers and help us explore unfamiliar ideas. By reducing routine burdens, it could leave more time for family, creativity, service and worship. Its social value should include whether it strengthens our capacity to attend to one another.
The Qur’an places that choice within a larger purpose:
“Say, indeed, my prayer, my sacrifice, my living and my dying are for Allah, Lord of all the worlds.”
(Qur’an 6:162)
For Muslims, this is an orientation for the whole of life: our abilities and relationships belong within responsibility before God. It also brings a question into public discussion that people of different beliefs can recognise: what makes a life worthwhile beyond its measurable output?
Being needed, keeping a promise, forgiving someone and accompanying a person through grief may accomplish nothing a machine can count. They can nevertheless give a life its deepest meaning.
The father did not need a more intelligent message. He needed his son to make room for him.
AI may change what humans can do. We must still decide what is worth doing, why it should be done, and what kind of people we want to become.
As machines become more capable, will human beings remember what their humanity is for?
