4 Comments
User's avatar
Abdulahi Gesey's avatar

The ijtihad point is the one that sticks with me. AI can retrieve and link sources fast, but it can't carry moral responsibility before God, and that is the whole basis of a fatwa, not just the citation trail. The maqasid framework seems like the most useful lens for teaching this to students. It gives five clear things to check a technology against instead of a vague sense of good or bad. I've been trying to build a version of that check into a logic unit I teach. The fitra argument against transhumanism is the part most people skip past, but it might be the sturdiest part of the whole case.

Europos's avatar

Fitra as that which we are prohibited from altering (implying we can) and also, on some level cannot alter (per the two ways to interpret 30:30). We can use technology in perverse ways to stretch the limits of our nature, but suffer for it because on some level our nature remains the same

David Engels's avatar

Yes, absolutely. That is the proper of hybris - it is ultimately impossible, but still has its unavoidable punishment in itself.

Abdulahi Gesey's avatar

That distinction matters a lot. We can distort our nature and still suffer the consequences, which means fitra isn't just a limit on what we're allowed to do, it's also a description of what actually holds together when we ignore it.