Algorithmic Islam: Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Religious Authority among Muslims in the United States

• In Event: Sociology of Religion Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

This paper examines how the growing use of artificial intelligence reshapes the production and circulation of religious knowledge and reconfigures perceptions of authority among Muslims in the United States. The transition from digital technology as a conduit of religious messages to artificial intelligence as a governing infrastructure marks a shift in how religious authority is mediated, accessed, and operationalized. While a substantial body of scholarship has explored Islam and digital technologies, much of this work has focused on normative or jurisprudential questions—such as whether artificial intelligence can assist Islamic legal reasoning or how it should be evaluated within Islamic ethical frameworks. Less attention has been given to how these technologies are taken up in everyday religious life and how they may transform lived engagements with religious guidance.

Drawing on the sociology of religion and science and technology studies, and building on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, the paper conceptualizes Islamic authority as a relational space structured by unequal distributions of religious and symbolic capital. AI chatbots are not treated as autonomous religious authorities but as mediating actors that rearrange access to religious capital by bypassing institutional gatekeeping, offering immediacy without apprenticeship, and lowering the cost of religious consultation. Whereas earlier digital environments multiplied interlocutors and facilitated the pluralization of authority, AI potentially compresses interaction into a dyadic relationship between a seeker and an algorithmic interface, shifting online religiosity toward more individualized forms of consultation.

The study is part of an ongoing research project that combines survey research and semi-structured interviews with Muslim participants in the United States, alongside comparative analysis of chatbot responses and established fatwas. It examines patterns of use, perceptions of trust and legitimacy, and whether AI-generated religious guidance supplements or displaces reliance on traditional scholars. By theorizing AI as a new stage of mediation and grounding the analysis in empirical investigation, the paper contributes to sociological debates on mediation, authority, and the transformation of religious knowledge in an increasingly algorithmically mediated religious field.

Author

• Mohamed Mohamed, George Washington University