Islamic Law and Human Judgment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstrak

The integration of artificial intelligence into legal processes raises urgent questions about the compatibility of algorithmic reasoning with established frameworks of legal authority. While existing scholarship has examined AI's epistemological limitations in Western legal traditions, the specific challenge posed by AI to Islamic jurisprudential authority remains undertheorized. This article examines the epistemological tensions generated when AI-assisted systems enter Islamic legal environments, arguing that legal authority in the Islamic tradition is constitutively bound to taklif, niyyah, and the morally accountable exercise of ijtihad in ways that preclude autonomous legal authority by any algorithmic system. Through systematic thematic review of interdisciplinary literature spanning Islamic legal theory, philosophy of law, and AI ethics, the study demonstrates that the epistemological architecture of Islamic jurisprudence is structurally misaligned with the probabilistic output logic of machine learning. Empirical evidence from evaluations of AI chatbot performance in Islamic guidance contexts confirms that current systems consistently fail to meet jurisprudential standards, with documented failures in hadith attribution, analogical reasoning, and methodological coherence. The article proposes a framework of hybrid jurisprudential governance grounded in maqasid al-shariʿah, in which AI serves an assistive rather than autonomous role, human scholars exercise substantive epistemic supervision, and moral accountability for every ruling remains with an identifiable human jurist. The concept of techno-jurisprudential competence is introduced as a novel theoretical contribution to the governance of AI in Islamic legal institutions.