To Whom Are We Handing Over Our Judgment?

As a Muslim, I believe that making sense of the present is one of our responsibilities towards it. Yet the world we are trying to understand changes as we look at it. Information multiplies, life accelerates, and the distance between keeping up with events and finding meaning in them keeps growing. Within this current, we try not to lose our bearings, hoping to remain on the straight path—sirat al-mustaqim.

Recognising our powerlessness before the current does not mean we must surrender to it. But awareness of danger alone is not enough either. When what we recognise finds no expression in our thinking, behaviour or choices, that knowledge can gradually become a burden of regret. We see, yet postpone considering how what we have seen ought to change our lives.

In his 1993 essay “Secularism: The Fragmentation of the Reasoning Heart,” published in Bilgi ve Hikmet, Abdurrahman Arslan directed his criticism of this new way of life towards its saturation with modernity.^[1] Today, we need to reconsider that criticism in light of the place the digital world and AI occupy in our lives.

We are no longer dealing only with tools that make our work easier. We live alongside systems that answer our questions, edit our writing, compare our options and sometimes suggest what we should do. The conveniences they offer are real. What is less clear is which responsibilities we also hand over as those conveniences become part of everyday life.

This is where the contradiction troubles me. We sense that this transformation is changing how we understand and live our lives. At the same time, we benefit from it and admire its speed and skill. We do not stand outside the order we criticise; we build our own lives with its conveniences. The question, then, is not only what attitude we should take towards technology, but which questions we must keep asking ourselves while using it.

One fundamental criticism of the modern worldview is that it turns existence into a resource to be controlled and used. The world becomes less a realm of beings to understand and relate to, and more a domain to calculate, manage and exploit. Within this outlook, knowledge becomes one of the instruments for exercising power over the world.

AI extends that capacity into human thought. Through it, we can now organise not only production processes, but our language, attention, decisions and ways of describing ourselves. Often, we do this willingly rather than under pressure: to save a little time, write a better sentence, reduce uncertainty or lighten the weight of a decision.

Our responsibility here is to consider justice before dismissing the benefits. We should ask how a tool used for our own convenience changes our relationships with ourselves and others. The fact that something can be done does not mean it ought to be done. Nor does an answer’s usefulness make it true.

Nietzsche’s “God is dead” cannot be read merely as a declaration of disbelief. It also points to the erosion of the ability of the idea of God and Christianity to sustain a shared framework of meaning and values in the Western world.^[2] This erosion distances people not only from their old answers, but also from the common foundations on which they could base their judgments.

Looking at AI today, I hear the question this thought opens up from another direction: in a world where older authorities have lost their place, to whom are we handing over the authority to answer?

To speak of a “god resurrected” in this sense is not to claim that AI has become a divine being. It is to question the place we make for it in our search for meaning and judgment. A system that is always accessible, can speak on almost any subject and adapts to the language and circumstances of the person asking may gradually become more than a tool we consult. It may become an authority we turn to.

I use the metaphor of “secularism’s resurrected god” to describe this possibility. This new authority does not ask us to believe in it. It often gains a place in our lives through a modest exchange: it answers a question, resolves a doubt or offers a path that seems reasonable. As we grow accustomed to the comfort of an answer, we may neglect to question its foundations.

The authority here does not arise from some truth the machine possesses in its own right. The data used to train it, design choices and the boundaries set by the institutions developing it shape the answers it can give. Yet all of this appears before us as a single, fluent voice. Its consistency and apparent confidence can make it harder to notice the assumptions beneath its answers.

It need not openly conflict with religion either. It can answer a religious question, use the language of our faith and respond with understanding. But familiar language does not mean that the standards behind it are the same as ours. This is precisely where an answer tailored to an individual may come to be accepted as a neutral and unquestionable judgment.

As a Muslim, my central question is not how much AI can say about religion, but what happens to my judgment, intention and responsibility while I speak with it. A tool can help me think. But can it carry, in my place, the obligation to decide what is just, accept the consequences of my decisions and, when necessary, act against my own interests?

Making sense of the present also requires recognising our own part in the midst of these conveniences. As we use the answers AI offers, we must notice which questions we have stopped asking.

Because receiving an answer from a machine does not remove our responsibility for the choice we make.

I first wrote this essay on 22 July 2023. On 3 October 2026, I revisited it and revised some of its wording and the connections between its ideas. This English translation was published on 5 October 2026.