Faith vs Fakery
Why Islamic Ethics Can’t Fix the Deepfake Crisis
💥 A Brutally Honest Breakdown of “Combating Fake News… Insights from the Islamic Ethical Tradition”
🚨 Introduction: Noble Intentions, Flawed Execution
A 2019 paper titled “Combating Fake News, Misinformation, and Machine Learning Generated Fakes: Insights from the Islamic Ethical Tradition” attempts to apply classical Islamic teachings to modern tech problems like deepfakes and AI-generated lies.
Spoiler: It doesn’t work.
This is a critical breakdown of the paper’s claims — with no sugar-coating, no pinches pulled, and no blind reverence for tradition where logic fails.
⚠️ What the Paper Gets Right (Bare Minimum Credit)
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Fake news and deepfakes are dangerous — Correct.
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Islamic teachings condemn deception — Also true.
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Moral responsibility matters — Sure, at the individual level.
But…
🧱 The Core Problem: Dragging a 7th-Century Toolset Into a 21st-Century Battlefield
The authors argue that the science of Hadith (how Muslims validated sayings of the Prophet) can be used to fight fake news and AI-generated fakes.
That’s like using a sundial to detect cybercrime.
The Hadith verification system:
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Was oral, manual, and based on character trust, not hard evidence.
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Is historically disputed, politicized, and far from airtight.
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Is completely unsuited for automated bot networks, algorithmic propaganda, or deepfakes.
🧠 Misuse of Analogy: Hadith ≠ Fact-Checking
The paper claims we can rate digital sources the way scholars rated hadith narrators. But:
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A narrator’s “piety” doesn’t equal data integrity.
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Sectarian bias polluted much of hadith grading.
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Deepfakes aren’t oral stories — they’re pixel-perfect digital forgeries.
This is a false analogy, plain and simple.
📉 What the Paper Completely Misses
Despite talking about AI, the authors ignore:
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Explainability
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Model transparency
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Bias detection
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Algorithmic auditing
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Data provenance
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AI risk classification
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Human-in-the-loop systems
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Regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act
In short, they name-drop AI terms but never engage with AI as a real-world engineering problem.
🛡️ Islamic Ethics ≠ Technological Defense
Quoting Quran verses like "speak the truth" or "verify news" may guide personal behavior. But they won’t stop:
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A GAN model creating fake porn
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A chatbot spreading conspiracy theories
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A state actor deploying AI for disinformation warfare
This is like bringing a moral compass to a drone strike.
🧨 The Dangerous Oversight: Romanticizing Hadith Science
They treat Hadith criticism as a model of rigorous truth-seeking.
Reality check:
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Hadith collections are riddled with contradictions.
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Scholars disagreed constantly on who was reliable.
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Politics shaped what got preserved — not just truth.
Building an AI fact-checking system on that foundation?
That’s intellectual malpractice.
🔚 Final Verdict: Sermon Disguised as a Solution
| Aspect | Reality Check |
|---|---|
| Islamic ethics | Good for behavior, not for detection |
| Hadith science | Historically biased, methodologically outdated |
| AI technical engagement | Virtually nonexistent |
| Practical recommendations | Shallow and wishful |
| Value for AI policy debates | Zero |
🎯 Conclusion: This Isn’t the Blueprint We Need
If you want to stop deepfakes and AI-generated lies, you need:
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Tech literacy
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Evidence-based systems
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Transparent algorithms
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Cross-disciplinary cooperation
Not a rehash of ancient oral traditions wrapped in moral preaching.
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