Beyond Belief

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More than a week has passed since Kuala Kedah MP Ahmad Fakhruddin Fakhrurazi expressed his worries in Parliament that artificial intelligence (AI) may eventually replace the ustaz.
Our self-serving politicians and our kangkung academics, who the auditor-general confirmed churned out over 1,000 “unsatisfactory” papers last year at the cost of RM148 million, have yet to respond to his sincere concerns. Why this wall of silence?
Where are our “pemimpin” who are so easily outraged over socks and sandwiches?
Are they waiting for a new set of standard operating procedures on how to comment on matters such as these? Or are they lying in wait to ambush the “other” when we wade into this matter?
Perhaps they are merely continuing our grand tradition of being the blissfully happy katak dibawah tempurung, secure in the cool comfort of the old coconut shell.
AI advancing at blistering speed
Meanwhile, half a world away from us, a new Google AI tool, “Co-Scientist”, was put to work last week on why some superbugs are immune to antibiotics, researched for a decade now by Professor Jose Penades and his team in Imperial College.
This AI tool reached the same conclusions in a mere 48 hours. Expect an avalanche of brilliant and beneficial medical advancements using AI in the years ahead!
And while some of us lay comatose under our tempurung, Microsoft announced days ago its first quantum computing chip, Majorana 1, a major step in the company’s effort to produce devices that might someday solve problems beyond the reach of modern computers.
This chip fits in eight qubits on a sticky note-sized piece of hardware that could house a million such chips. Apa lagi kita mau!
And just days ago, Qatar signed a five-year deal with the company “Scale AI” to deploy AI-powered tools to improve government services. The deal will allow its civil servants to use predictive analytics, automation, and advanced data analysis to streamline their operations.
Perhaps their government had had enough of their corrupt civil servants pilfering from the khazanah while pretending to serve the people.
Emulating the golden age
While we are still in the Middle East, Al-Azhar University, known globally for its deep roots in Islamic scholarship, announced plans last October to establish a faculty dedicated to AI to showcase its commitment to remaining relevant in a rapidly evolving technological landscape including in fields like machine learning, robotics, language processing, and big data analysis.
Al-Azhar’s push into the brave new world of AI is no surprise. Surely, the academic staff at this venerable centre of scholarship and learning going back to the 10th century are keenly aware of that period in history from the 8th to the 13th century called the Islamic Golden Age, which saw science, economics, and culture all flourish as never before in an empire made of many different peoples and cultures.
The first two centuries of this Golden Age witnessed a gigantic endeavour to acquire and translate the ancient sciences of the Greeks, followed by a period graced by free-spirited luminaries such as Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sinna, and Ibn Rushd, to name a few.
The academics of Al-Azhar must surely have been aware that as the empire expanded, highly talented philosophers and scientists from the Hellenistic, Roman, Persian, and Indian worlds were all brought within its folds to give it a flying start.
Whatever their roots or origins, these luminaries displayed an openness of mind that is truly remarkable. They did not bay for the blood of those who disagreed with them or plot their downfall.
They agreed to disagree, accepting that the puny mind of men cannot truly understand the “mind” of the Almighty, as in this Persian comment: “How can an ant ever understand an elephant!”
Ever mindful that knowledge, unlike revelation, is built up layer upon layer, they carefully examined the works of the men who came before them.
Open-minded luminaries
Take Al-Farabi. Born in present-day Kazakhstan, Persian was his mother tongue, and he was well-versed in religious texts by the time of his early youth.
In later life, he was called the “Second Master” by his students and fellow scholars. And who then was the First Master? Why, Plato himself! Al-Farabi was an unapologetic neo-Platonist. It is said that his great work, Madinat al-Fadila, on what constitutes the ideal state, was inspired by Plato’s “The Republic”.
Then there was this lively polemic among these luminaries that spanned the centuries, with Al-Ghazali calling the philosophers who promoted Neoplatonism as displaying tahafut, “incoherence”, which was later rebutted point by point and line by line by Ibn Rushd, the Andalusian polymath in his work the “The Incoherence of the Incoherence”, insisting on the harmony that exists between faith and philosophy, between Aristotelian ideas and Islam.
Greek philosopher AristotleFor him, Aristotle is also right, and the revelations of the Quran are also the eternal truth. No, he wasn’t condemned as a blasphemer.
And what of the brilliant and ephemeral Ibn Sinna, whose genius shines through the ages and after whom hospitals continue to be named?
His father was likely an Ismaili like the Fatimids then ruling Egypt, who actually founded Al-Azhar. By 10, he could recite the Quran from beginning to end. Then, he became obsessed with logic from age 16 onwards.
A libertine who made no secret of his love for drink and music, he had once fled from serving an orthodox ruler. He was by then an accomplished man of medicine with a track record to match. But ever the quintessential man of science, he thirsted for knowledge like the desert for rain.
History, religion distorted
And so we return once more to the progressive academics in Al-Azhar, who know that trying to put the brakes on AI is akin to commanding the tides to recede.
It is only a matter of time before the masses will be able to unearth with a click of the mouse the AI-driven hidden past buried under the weight and welter of wilful misinterpretations of religious texts made to suit the ends of those exercising political and religious authority over the masses.
Yes, the more things change, the more they remain the same! And AI will surely also “expose” the honest mistakes and differing religious views and narratives through the ages. Religious authorities can run, but they now cannot hide!
Who can deny that the interpretation of both history and religion is often influenced by the politics and geopolitics of the day, that many wrong roads have been taken, and mistakes leading to much suffering and pain?
In the Middle East, one disaster stands out: the frightful sack by the Mongols of the greatest city of its time, Baghdad, in 1258. Its House of Wisdom, Bayt al-Hikmah, containing priceless treatises and texts, was the envy of the world, but it now lay in ruins.
Sample AI prompt: Could Baghdad have avoided the sack through better diplomacy? Another prompt: Is Ibn Tamiyyah’s extremist, life-annihilating response to the brutal Mongol conquest the correct one?
So, to Fakhruddin, here is one possible scenario regarding your concerns and worries: The use of AI may return religion to where it began and where it truly belongs - the hearts and minds of every one of us who see ourselves as a person of faith.
‘Knowledge lies within the heart of man’
To illustrate this point, here is a delightful story from none other than Al-Ghazali himself, the man known to religious scholars as a Hujjat al-Islam, Proof of Islam: He recalled an event from his later youth travelling to another city to further his religious studies at the invitation of a renowned scholar.
While crossing the high peaks with his donkey laden with his study notes, his caravan was attacked and robbed by brigands. He pleaded with the chief of the brigands to return to him the notes and papers containing the knowledge he had painstakingly gathered over the years.
The brigand chief mocked him thus: “Knowledge lies not on the back of a donkey; knowledge lies within the heart of man!”
The search for “certainty” in his heart, qalb, became the hallmark of his life’s work, leading him into the steep paths of rational, theological, and philosophical speculation.
Not for him was the easy way out of using religious texts as mere slogans and symbols to take advantage of the ignorant or to oppress the weak. All said, he was not a politician, nor did he ever aspire to be one. Thank God!
Now for the disclaimer: Neither ChatGPT nor DeepSeek was used to write this piece, having been warned beforehand that when AI bots are caught out peddling untruths, the techies call it “hallucinating”, not lying.
I also take comfort that OpenAI’s ChatGPT, two years old now, was recently put through a medical test by Israeli scientists and found to be in “cognitive decline” given its cerebral-like exertions. Yes, AI can be as human as us! - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT

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