Nazeer Ayyad
Grand Mufti of Egypt
Egypt’s Grand Mufti issued an official ruling that it is “impermissible in Islamic law to rely on AI applications to obtain a fatwa,” and warned against letting chatbots interpret the Qur’an — arguing the work of religious judgment cannot be automated.
In his words
It is impermissible in Islamic law to rely on AI applications to obtain a fatwa.
Fatwas issued by AI cannot replace human fatwas, because a fatwa is not just a textual response or information extracted from a database.
Biography
Nazeer Ayyad (Nazir Mohamed Ayyad) is the Grand Mufti of Egypt, appointed in 2024 to lead Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah, one of the Islamic world’s most influential fatwa institutions. He succeeded Shawki Allam and oversees the body responsible for issuing authoritative religious rulings for Egypt and, through the General Secretariat for Fatwa Authorities Worldwide, far beyond it.
A ruling against AI fatwas
In December 2025 Dar al-Ifta, under Ayyad, issued a formal fatwa declaring it impermissible to rely on AI applications — including chatbots like ChatGPT — to obtain religious rulings or to independently interpret the Qur’an. The ruling holds that such tools “fall short in many essential standards of quality, scholarly, and Islamic legal precision required in this field,” and that “the answers may be right, wrong, or even contradictory to established rulings.”
Issuing a fatwa is a complex ijtihad process that requires an informed and trained human intellect… These are not things that AI can fully encompass.
Ayyad has paired the prohibition with a constructive program — promoting an ethical charter for fatwa authorities in the age of AI, and conceding that the technology may assist with research and dissemination. His objection is specific: the final act of religious judgment, which weighs text against a changing human context, must remain with a qualified scholar.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/nazeer-ayyad