Coursera, founded in 2012, emerged as one of the pioneering platforms of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) movement. Soon, leading universities – Stanford, Princeton, Michigan, Duke and others – joined in and education began to spill beyond campuses into the hands of anyone with an Internet connection. What printing had achieved for the written word, MOOCs began to achieve for university-level learning: expanding the circle of who gets to learn.

But technology did not stop there. While MOOCs delivered information, AI (Artificial Intelligence) began shaping tools that could interact with learners. Unlike a textbook, these tools could respond, adjust, explain, and guide. AI assistants such as ChatGPT represent a moment when

education becomes personalized, flexible, and available at any hour of the day. They are not simply repositories of information – they are companions in thinking.

The roots of ChatGPT lie in a breakthrough known as the Transformer architecture, introduced in 2017 under the title “Attention Is All You Need.” This innovation made possible a family of models – GPT-1, GPT-2, GPT-3 and further – capable of understanding patterns in human language at remarkable depth. Over time, ChatGPT evolved from a single model into a spectrum of specialized assistants, able to analyze, create, and collaborate. (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models)

Yet the idea that knowledge will one day reach everyone, without distinction, is not new.

A narration attributed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) conveys a striking divine promise:

“God said, ‘In the end of time, I will spread knowledge so widely that men and women, the free and the enslaved, the young and the old – everyone – will have the opportunity to learn.’” (Ibn Abd al-Barr. Jami’ Bayan al-‘Ilm wa Fadlih)

This narration is not found in the authenticated primary sources due to weak chain of narration. It is found in secondary sources; but the fact that renowned scholars like Ibn Abd al-Barr noted it in their works makes it worth pondering over. This wise saying predicts not simply an expansion of education, but a transformation of society. In a world where access to learning has historically been shaped by gender, wealth, age, or social position, these words imagine a future where knowledge becomes universal and where the privilege of learning dissolves into a shared human inheritance.

“Men and women” – a hint that gender will no longer determine who may seek understanding. “The free and the enslaved” – that knowledge will transcend status and economic barriers. “The young and the old” – that learning becomes lifelong, not limited to childhood and youth.

One cannot help but assume that long before our age of digital platforms and AI, a future where learning flows to all corners of society was already being imagined in the ancient world. It is not difficult to see resonances with the present moment: AI tutors on smartphones, open courses from world-class universities, translated materials, adaptive learning systems, and global communities of learners who can study together without ever meeting in person.

From this perspective, AI technology is not an isolated achievement of the 21st century; it is part of a broader human journey toward expanding the horizons of knowledge. And perhaps, as this narration suggests, it is also part of a spiritual journey, one in which the spread of learning reflects a divine mercy extended to all people.

We have lived with imitation forever. Dye pretended to be royal purple. Bronze pretended to be gold. Photography pretended to trap time. Every tool that extends human power also extends human pretense. The difference now is acceleration and opacity: an edit so swift that even conscience can’t keep pace, a polish so seamless it erases its own fingerprints. Authenticity, once a matter of manners and craft, begins to feel like a moral emergency.

The word “authentic” is often treated like a mood: earthy bread, unfiltered photos, a personality that “feels real.” But moods are evaporative. I want a definition that can weather automation. For me, authenticity means at least three things: a truthful intention, an accountable process, and a risk carried by a person—not just a model—at the end. If any one of those goes missing, I can still admire the product, but I struggle to trust the person behind it, even if that person is me.

I am a student of scripture and interpretation; the air I breathe is full of words—recited, argued, memorized, sung. Words are supposed to approach truth, not merely to resemble it. In my tradition we talk about sidq (truthfulness), niyyah (intention), ihsan (excellence), and amanah (trust). These are not ornamental ideas; they are disciplines of selfhood. AI does not cancel them; if anything, it intensifies their necessity. A tool that can impersonate excellence forces us to decide whether we want excellence to be an impersonation at all.

Consider the student essay. A model can outline, draft, tidy, and even simulate “voice.” The result may be correct, even insightful. But where does the student’s intellectual risk live? What has she actually learned to do under the skin? When the paragraphs look sturdy enough to lean on, she is tempted to stop building muscles and start leaning permanently. Authenticity, then, is not a refusal of assistance; it is the refusal to outsource the very thing that the task exists to train. If my course is meant to form judgment, then I can’t delegate judgment to a statistical system without hollowing myself.

Consider devotional art. I can train an algorithm on a hundred recitations and produce a voice that glides like a blade through silk. Does its perfection honor the text, or does it smuggle in a lie about effort? The beauty of breath is that it runs out. The realism of virtue is that it costs. A cloned voice can mimic the contours of humility; it cannot carry humility’s weight.

But the age of AI also disciplines my suspicion. I do not want to become a nostalgist for struggle merely for struggle’s sake, as if the only honest loaf is kneaded by hand and the only honest letter is scratched by a quill. Tools have always multiplied human meaning. A calculator doesn’t corrupt arithmetic; it frees the mind to do higher math. Spellcheck does not destroy literature; it rescues attention for the sentence. So the question is not whether to use AI. The question is whether, in using it, I remain willing to be the person responsible for what the work becomes.

To make that willingness practical, I’ve started practicing a small liturgy of making—four habits that help me stay answerable to myself:

Maksad — Purpose. Before I open a model, I ask: what is the task trying to shape in me? If the goal is recall, I read. If the goal is style, I draft with my own sentences first, however clumsy. If the goal is exploration, I might brainstorm with a model, but I mark the frontier as borrowed. Clarity of aim guards me from seduction by convenience.

Musyaratah — Guardrails. I decide in advance what lines I will not cross. I will not present machine-generated text as my own for graded work. I will not clone human voices without consent. I will cite sources I discover through a model just as if a friend had recommended them. Constraints, like rhyme in a poem, make freedom musical.

Muraqabah — Accountability. I keep a process log. It is not a confession booth; it is a checksum of the self. I note what I asked a model to do, what I adopted, what I altered, what I rejected. If someone asks how I made this, I can tell the true story of the making. The log is for my integrity, not for another’s approval.

Muhasabah — Reflection. After I “finish,” I step back and listen for the room tone of the piece. Does it sound like me—a me who has grown, yes, but still recognizably me? Could I defend the claim I have made without the screen? If the answer is no, the work may be excellent but not yet mine.

These habits are small, almost domestic, but they wage a quiet war against the slippage of authorship. A shortcut that hides itself is a lie; a tool that introduces itself can be a teacher.

To test myself, I ran an experiment. I wrote two short reflections on the same passage: one with the gentle scaffolding of a model that proposed themes and metaphors, and one entirely alone, allowing only books and silence inside the room. The glossier one was not the one I thought. The “assisted” piece flowed and sparkled; it also lacked the knot in the string where my confusion had been tied. The solitary piece was messier; but in its hesitations I could hear a person who had wrestled, and whose voice—imperfect, specific—had weight. If writing is, among other things, a trail of thinking, then the overly smooth trail begins to look suspiciously like a sidewalk poured after the journey ended.

A friend challenged me: “But if the goal is to help readers, why not publish the better piece?” Because better is not the only category that matters. We need a second axis—call it answerability. A piece is answerable when a human being stands behind it and can truthfully say, “I did this much. I accept these consequences.” The reader deserves craft; they also deserve custody. Who is the custodian of the claim? If the maker is only a curator of model outputs, the answer grows indistinct. The words may be true; the accountability is blurry. In a world already allergic to responsibility, blur is not neutral. It is the solvent of trust.

The most common defense of seamless assistance is compassion: Let’s not gatekeep excellence. Let’s let more people sound good. I agree with the compassion; I resist the conclusion. True inclusion invites people to grow strong in their own voices, not merely to be dressed in a costume that fits a market taste. If we unwittingly define dignity as access to a convincing imitation, then we will populate our public life with expertly rendered masks. I do not think we can build a trustworthy civilization out of masks.

Of course, there are ways in which simulation serves mercy: a voice for someone who has lost hers, a predictive text that helps a non-native speaker write with less fear, an image tool that enables a person with limited mobility to tell visual stories. In such cases, disclosure is not self-sabotage; it is part of the dignity. “This is me, with help.” The sentence is humbler and truer than “This is me,” when the latter would be a lie.

Disclosure, in fact, may be the new politeness. We already accept labels that tell us what has been added: contains nuts, edited for clarity, color-corrected. Perhaps we need soft language for creative process as well: assisted outline, language polish, synthetic voice with consent. These are not apologies; they are invitations to trust. They let receivers calibrate their expectations without forcing creators into a permanent performance of purity.

Will some people game the new etiquette? Of course. People already counterfeit everything that is worth trusting. But an ethic does not need perfect compliance to be worthwhile. It only needs enough faithful practitioners to make the real visible again.

When I reach for examples, I keep circling back to the ancient contrast between spectacle and sign. Spectacle calls attention to itself: Look how astonishing this is. A sign points beyond itself: Look where this leads you. Much of our AI-driven culture is spectacular, and a little spectacle is fine—life without astonishment would be gray. But a life dominated by spectacle makes us shallow. We begin to prefer what dazzles over what guides. In my own studies, I try to remember that the most important truths rarely arrive in glitter. They arrive in the steady work of reality: caring for parents, reading primary sources, returning a borrowed thing on time, pronouncing a word as it was meant to be pronounced.

This is not an argument against beauty. It is a plea for the kind of beauty that costs a person something. There is beauty in a scale sung until the throat stings, in a paragraph rewritten until the music settles, in a calculation checked twice. The machine can sketch such beauty. It cannot suffer for it. And suffering—not dramatic, but patient, sustained—is often what turns the merely correct into the genuinely true.

What, then, should we do? We can enact authenticity at three levels: the self, the circle, and the commons.

At the level of the self, we can cultivate appetites that resist fakery. Appetites are trainable. If we binge on frictionless polish, our tongues forget the taste of labor. So we can fast a little from perfect surfaces. We can keep some imperfections on purpose—not as a performance of rusticity, but as a reminder that we are not machines. We can practice saying, when praised, “Thank you; I had help,” and letting that sentence be part of the beauty.

At the level of the circle—friends, classmates, colleagues—we can covenant for clarity. Agree on what kinds of assistance are honorable for a given task. Normalize process notes. Praise the growth that shows in the second attempt, not only the result that gleams in the first. The point is not surveillance; the point is shared courage.

At the level of the commons—publishing, platforms, institutions—we can ask for policies that assume human dignity. Tools can include visible provenance, watermarks that are hard to forge, and optional toggles for disclosure tags. Prizes and journals can reward accountability statements as well as elegance. The goal is not to penalize assistance, but to refuse the disappearing act. When a culture asks “How was this made?” as naturally as it asks “Is this good?” life becomes harder for counterfeits and easier for craft.

But what if the counterfeit is harmless? someone might ask. If the cloned voice soothes a child to sleep, who is harmed? I do not want to be severe; I have been soothed by small mercies that were not entirely honest. Yet the harm of habitual imitation is cumulative. If we allow simulation to become the default texture of care, we teach ourselves to accept gestures without givers. We risk raising a generation comforted by performances of presence rather than presence itself. The harm will appear, like all deep harms, as hollowness.

One evening, after too much thinking, I returned to the same recording that had tricked me. I played it on purpose, knowing it was synthetic. I listened for the seams and could not hear them. The vowels warmed, the consonants glinted, the pauses landed as if the singer had lungs. I tried to be angry and failed. The file was not malicious. It was simply better than my ear. So I did something awkward and good: I put the phone down, sat on the edge of the bed, and recited alone. The room was ordinary. My tone wavered and my breath ran short. But a small confidence visited me: this sound, for all its ordinary, was not pretending to be anything. It was mine to be judged for; mine to improve; mine to offer.

Authenticity will always be partly aspirational. We declare we are telling the truth and then we learn how to do it. We promise to disclose and then we forget and begin again. But aspiration is not hypocrisy; it is training. The self is a muscle, not a statue. Every day I decide which parts to exercise: the instinct for polish or the instinct for presence. In the age of AI, the instinct for polish will have irresistible help. So I must nourish the other instinct with choices that keep me answerable—choices that keep a person at the center of the work.

I still love the tremor in a human voice. I love the penultimate draft that isn’t smooth yet but already honest. I love the awkward sentence that finally learns to walk by itself. I love the breath that runs out and then returns. In a future crowded with convincing performances, these small loves feel like the last quiet luxuries we can afford. Perhaps the test of our intelligence will not be how perfectly we can imitate ourselves, but how bravely we can remain ourselves while we learn to live with perfect imitation.

So here is my working creed, shyly offered to anyone else who wants to stay real without becoming a Luddite:

Use the tools, but don’t let them use your courage.

Disclose your shortcuts, and let the truth become part of your style.

Keep a little friction in the craft; let it remember you.

Accept the cost of carrying your claims.

And when the clone sings beautifully, sing anyway. The world does not merely need correct sounds. It needs responsible singers.

I recently watched a scholar who broadened my perspective on the sin of lying. In the video, he say, “let me take a sip of water, my lips are dry,” and brought the water to his mouth. After taking two sips he continued with these words:  

“I said let me take one sip, but I took two, I wonder if that becomes a lie too. It is a sensitive issue because everything that comes out of the mouth is being recorded. We say ‘a sip’ as a figure of speech to imply that we will not drink much; but why speak in figures of speech when you can speak truth with clarity? Perhaps the correct form should have been to say ‘let me take one or two sips.’ That indicates a few sips.”¹  

This sensitivity over a sip of water should in fact be a subject of deep thought for all of us. If such sensitivity is needed for such a small action, how more careful should we be for more major things in our lives?

Starting from this matter of a sip of water, I reviewed our daily life and unfortunately realized how common these seemingly insignificant lies are in the virtual world. This virtual world is very colorful, attractive, and just as entertaining. It brings many things to our feet, lets us shop with one click, gives us access to far more than what people once learned through months of travel with a single touch in the blink of an eye, allows us to see and speak with our loved ones far away as if they were right beside us, and lets us complete our work from our homes. A long list of benefits stands before us. But together with this potential for good, who knows how many times each day we also use it for harm. Sadly, the virtual world has become a world of lies. It seems to have melted away our moral values and all the beauty we possess. If you want examples, the examples are so many that even mentioning a few here may make us all hold up the mirror to ourselves, do some reflection, and act more carefully from now on.

It is very clear that this is not only an individual problem but also a reflection of a global collapse of mindset. The following words of Noam Chomsky shed light on this very situation: “I don’t know what word in the English language – I can’t find one – that applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars into highly overstuffed pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t begin to approach it.”²

This statement expresses in a deep way the selfishness and indifference behind the recklessness of the digital world.

After all this, let us look together at some mistakes that many people make knowingly or unknowingly and search for solutions.

Deceptions in the virtual world

User agreements

When buying anything or installing an application or program, the user agreements that appear before us include many risks and lies for both those who provide them to us and those who say I have read and approve. These texts, consciously written in pages of tiny font, contain so many misleading pieces of information that we would not like, harming our privacy, full of verbiage and slippery expressions and word tricks, that it is impossible for many people to read them, understand them, or willingly accept them. Unfortunately, the number of users who actually read these texts is almost non-existent, but the number of those who approve them is very high, and perhaps none of us refrains from approving. In this situation, we may try to justify ourselves by saying “but I need to use this, I do not want to pay money, I have no choice but to accept”; this does not change the fact that we slip into lying by accepting texts with an “I have read” statement without reading them, nor does it change the fact that we are too lazy to learn our rights as users and too unwilling to demand that companies stop wrongful practices when necessary.

Likewise, the behavior of producers who, out of greed, violate the rights of users, manipulate default settings to their own advantage and to the detriment of consumers, and exploit people’s weaknesses and legal loopholes is also among the unacceptable actions.

Fake identities and digital courage

In the virtual realm, hiding behind fake identities to present oneself differently in order to seek a job or spouse, to pick fights and provoke people, to spit hatred toward individuals or groups of different beliefs, cultures, or statuses, and to shout from behind a screen like a warrior, things one cannot do or say face to face are among the most common painful scenes. There may be some objections on this matter. For example, those living under oppressive regimes or those who fear discrimination may be excused to some extent and may be exceptions, but even there, caution is needed and one must not depart from truth and justice.

Digital lies in work and livelihood

Another problematic area is the lies used due to livelihood needs, job searches, or sometimes out of greed. Using fake experience or information is the most striking example of this. Entering jobs that we do not deserve through different names, photos, experience claims, and the like is unfortunately an open wound and the first step toward unethical earnings, which is a very dangerous path. Using artificial intelligence in interviews or exams to cheat, having someone else take an exam in one’s place, or obtaining answers illegally are behaviors that are both morally and legally wrong and unfortunately increasingly widespread.

We also sadly witness situations where remote work possibilities are exploited. People working in developed countries for higher salaries hire individuals from countries with fewer opportunities and much lower wages to work in their place and pocket the difference without doing any work themselves, gaining unjust profit. In addition, in hourly paid work, failing to do one’s tasks and instead engaging in personal chores, or using provided resources for personal matters, are also mistakes seen at a significant rate.

As a general principle, both the employee and the employer must adhere to the initial agreement and respect each other’s rights. The employer must not prevent the employee from fulfilling obligatory religious duties, and if he does, one should not work in that job. However, the employee must also be very careful and must not forget that even optional worship cannot be performed at work without the employer’s permission. On the other hand, employers taking overly restrictive measures, such as constantly monitoring and recording the employee and violating privacy, or making them work longer hours than agreed, are also wrong.

Comment manipulations, bots, and fake crowds

Fake reviews written for products, thousands of automated likes, and praise or criticism campaigns carried out with fake accounts mislead social media users. Some companies employ people to write good reviews, delete negative ones, or give the product for free in exchange for fabricated praise. The presence of tens of thousands of comments on some products often reflects not genuine user interest but systematic manipulation.

Rage bait and the exploitation of human emotions

Rage bait, chosen as Oxford’s word of the year for 2025, shows how widespread the trend of gathering engagement through anger has become. These contents provoke people through extreme expressions, and as the argument grows, the content becomes more visible. Thus, the most sensitive points of society are turned into tools of conflict, hatred, and hostility, becoming mere engagement material.

Clickbait, deliberate mistakes, and price tricks

Clickbait titles mislead users with irrelevant content. Some accounts deliberately make spelling and punctuation mistakes to cause people to comment corrections. Hiding the price of a product and saying message for price is another common tactic used to increase engagement. Showing a large carpet in a photo but listing the price for the smallest doormat model, then showing the real numbers after someone clicks, is among the new forms of deception in digital spaces.

Troll networks and state supported digital manipulations

Troll networks working with thousands of fake accounts to spread certain ideas, silence opponents, and shape public perception are among the most dangerous elements of social media today. The fact that some of them are supported by powerful companies or authoritarian states exposes the global dimension of the issue. Societies are manipulated in this way, and grounds are laid for wars, conflicts, and isolation.

The vicious cycle fed by algorithms

It is also clearly seen that technology companies directly feed this unethical situation. Because these companies use algorithms that promote content by click value and push forward high engagement posts automatically. These algorithms rank content only by superficial metrics such as clicks, comments, and shares, without looking at what is true, false, harmful, or beneficial. As a result, content based on truth, calmness, and constructive dialogue becomes invisible, while provocative, conflict raising, anger inducing, or deceptive material is constantly pushed forward.

This system rewards wrongdoers, increases their visibility, and gives them material profit. Those who behave correctly remain in the background and become less visible. Consequently, people receive a subconscious message saying, “I earn more by doing wrong” and increase their unethical behaviors. Companies also feel no need to change the system because they profit from this increase through advertising revenue. In the end, the user, the producer, and the technology company become parts of a cycle that feeds one another.

As long as this cycle is not broken, social media will continue to be a mechanism that suppresses truth, magnifies lies, and accelerates moral collapse.

What can be done?

It is not enough to mention problems only. Both individual and social steps are needed to keep the digital world on a moral foundation. In summary:

Reporting harmful content: Provocative, hateful, manipulative, or deceptive content must be reported when encountered. As report numbers rise, the algorithm will push such content back.

Not giving engagement through comments or shares: Liking, commenting, or sharing makes a post more visible. Not engaging with wrong content is the most effective response.

Establishing a culture of blocking: Blocking accounts that cross moral boundaries protects personal peace and prevents their behavior from being rewarded.

Creating public pressure on technology companies: Societies must demand more transparent algorithms, clearer user policies, and privacy protecting settings. Feedback is effective. Symbols similar to those used in films may be used to warn users about the reliability of content or its elements, and problematic users may be banned from systems.

Encouraging legal regulations: Demands must be delivered to lawmakers and decision makers. Clearer laws and regulations should be introduced in digital ethics, data security, and combating manipulation.

Digital awareness and ethics education: Children, youth, and adults must be taught digital literacy, source checking, truth distinction, information verification, and digital ethics. This strengthens the social fabric.

The role of opinion leaders: Religious scholars, academics, artists, scientists, and public figures must raise awareness on this issue. Social change continues only with the contribution of broad groups.

Conclusion

The world is changing very rapidly. As a result, new problems emerge in societies, and there is an urgent need for appropriate solutions. For these solutions, it is essential for experts from fields such as law, theology, sociology, psychology, technology, etc. to come together quickly and produce practical and applicable solutions suited to the conditions of this era and the issues deeply affecting society. Otherwise, problems will become gangrenous and major wrongs will be normalized. Instead of artificial rating boosting fruitless debates that distract society, it is unavoidable for our valuable scholarly community to focus on these issues.

What falls upon us is not to depart from truth. Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said “Always seek truth. Even if you see your destruction in truth, your salvation lies in it.” This is why the message he brought always upholds the truth, be it in the context of the employee and the employer relations, or whether it is a real or virtual world context.

In her winning essay, “The Counterfeit Nightingale and the Real Song,” Shivangi shares her experience of trying to identify birds by listening to them in nature and by using an app. It is a thoughtful exposition on the value of human effort—how it deepens our connection with the world and sharpens our insight – rather than relying solely on information displayed on our screens. Fatima Azzahra Ishak, who placed second in the contest, offers a profound reflection in her essay, “Between Sidq and Simulation: On Authenticity in the Age of AI,” exploring how we can engage with AI without compromising our authenticity and humility.

Kerem Yalcin, in “AI, Biology, and the Hidden Author Behind the Code,” presents AI as a compelling argument for the existence of God. As he explains, the autonomy AI appears to possess is borrowed; it operates through mechanisms designed by others: “AI can generate text or code, but it cannot decide why it should do so, nor can it sustain or direct its own existence.” Yalcin’s piece helps place things in perspective—whether biological processes or AI technologies, neither is equivalent to God, the true Creator.

One issue that often goes unnoticed is the extent to which we compromise our integrity as we spend more time online—and, increasingly, with AI. Zeynep Orhan argues that we engage in small acts of dishonesty almost constantly in the virtual world: signing user agreements without reading them, creating false identities, exaggerating qualifications in job applications, or posting fake reviews. Hiding behind screens does not change truths about who we are. Timeless teachings of faith traditions encourage us to seek truth at all times—and we should strive to do the same.

Amid all this noise and uncertainty, the lead article points us back to an inner compass. Fethullah Gülen redirects our attention from the external world to the depths of the soul. “Our hearts’ breaths have an articulation that has not yet been spoken,” he writes, urging us to communicate beyond sound and words—silently, from the heart—so that we may find calm and uncover the treasures within.