Religious leaders must fight AI-driven disinformation, says Sultan Nazrin

KUALA LUMPUR: The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Shah, has urged religious leaders to counter disinformation driven by artificial intelligence that is reaching young people at a scale and speed no sermon ever could. He said algorithms could now “preach” more persuasively than authorities of faith.

Speaking at the 3rd international summit of religious leaders here today, he said the battle for youth engagement is increasingly being fought on platforms “we do not own” and in a “language we have been too slow to learn”.

He added that many young people, already burdened by climate anxiety, conflict and economic uncertainty, are also searching for meaning, belonging and trust.

The Perak ruler said institutions must stop speaking of youth only as the future and instead recognise they are already “organising, innovating and reshaping public discourse”.

The world’s 1.8 billion young people constitute the largest generation in history, with Muslims forming the youngest major faith community.

“We have spent a great deal of time talking about young people, and far too little time listening to them and sharing power with them. They ask to be treated as co-creators, not consultants,” he said.

Faith leaders are uniquely placed to close that gap, he said. “The task is not to dilute faith for our youth, nor to abandon inherited wisdom, but to bring that wisdom into living conversation with the conditions of the present world,” he added.

Sultan Nazrin said empowering young people and engaging them as partners was crucial, as violent extremists and religious teachers were competing for the same young hearts, but extremists did not approach them with a dry political manifesto.

“He comes clothed in scripture, quoting the very verses we quote. He invokes the same hunger for meaning, the same clarity of purpose, the same ache for dignity, and with great skill bends it away from mercy and towards grievance.

“He offers the sense of belonging that comes from having an imagined enemy. If all we offer in return is a sermon young people find remote, in a language they have stopped speaking, delivered inside a building they have stopped entering, then we have come armed with a manuscript to a contest being fought on iPhones,” he said.

On the role of faith in the digital age, Sultan Nazrin said Pope Leo last month issued his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the age of AI, in which he believes a Catholic pontiff and a Muslim imam can speak with one voice.

“The screen can deliver information, but only a human being can deliver meaning”.

About 1,500 scholars, policymakers and religious leaders from 31 countries are taking part in the summit, jointly organised by the Islamic development department (Jakim) and the Muslim World League.