ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ISLAMIC EDUCATION: OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES, AND AN ETHICAL FRAMEWORK GROUNDED IN MAQASID AL-SHARI’AH

Abstract

Artificial intelligence has become part of the everyday machinery of teaching, and its reach now extends into the institutions and disciplines of Islamic learning. Scholarship on this encounter is growing quickly. It remains fragmented, however, and despite an almost universal concern with ethics, there is still limited research that integrates the technological applications of AI, its ethical challenges, and Islamic epistemology within a unified maqasid-based framework. This article sets out to address that gap. It examines how AI is currently used in Islamic education, weighs the difficulties this raises, and develops an ethical and governance framework to guide responsible adoption. The study employs a critical narrative literature review and thematic synthesis of peer-reviewed scholarship and the principal AI-governance instruments published between 2018 and 2026. AI is found to support five domains, ranging from adaptive learning and conversational tutoring to assessment, language processing, and administration, while raising four recurring concerns: academic integrity and cognitive over-reliance, data privacy and algorithmic bias, the reconfiguration of teacher authority, and the doctrinal reliability of machine-generated content. Read against the UNESCO, OECD, European Union, and Malaysian frameworks, these largely procedural regimes are shown to leave the substantive ends of AI undetermined. The article proposes a three-layered framework integrating tawhidic epistemology, the maqasid al-shari’ah, and the principles of maslahah, amanah, karamah insaniyyah, and adab. It may serve as a guide for policymakers, educational institutions, and religious scholars seeking to govern AI responsibly.