Translating the sacred

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are having a profound impact on our present day. While AI is an established everyday reality in medicine, industry, and communication, it is also penetrating spheres that have long been considered exclusively human: art, poetry, ethics, philosophy and religion. 

What happens when an AI begins to "understand", translate and even theologically interpret religious content? What opportunities and dangers does the application of AI, for translations of the Qur'an or questions of divine knowledge, bring to Muslim life? 

The issue of AI and Islam is more than just a technical one. It is about fundamental questions: how can the Qur'an be translated at all? What does religious understanding mean? And where does mechanical imitation reach its limits? 

To translate is to take a stance

With the help of generative AI, the Qur'an can now be translated into any language. AI draws on existing translations, provided they are digitised, and writes variations on them, rewriting the Qur'an, for example, in the style of a poet. These technologies, as impressive as they are, may cross a religious-theological boundary as well as an academic one. 

Translation is more than linguistic transmission. It is an existential gesture of attentiveness—not merely transfer, but a stance. A stance toward the original text, toward truth and toward language. An authentic translation of the Qur'an must not only grasp the semantic content of the words (an answer to the simple question: "what does it say here?") but must consider the spiritual atmosphere, the rhythmic structure, and the historical and metaphysical dimensions of the text. 

For the Qur'an is not simply a communication of information. It is a speech that unfolds in the mode of revelation—poetic, laconic, fragmentary—full of both intratextual references and intertextual references to the Torah and Gospels. It addresses humanity by presenting God's word in human words. It is anchored not only in its language but in its time. 

The revelation of the Qur'an carries traces of the 7th century and the context of the Prophet Muhammad's life, as well as the promise of a timeless message based on the eternal will of God. Whoever translates it must engage with three dimensions: the historical context of the text, the translator's own complex context and the text's claim to be God's eternal word.  

In addition, the Qur'an itself works with ambiguities. Many things are not stated. Others appear in condensed, laconic form, with subtle shifts in meaning that can be understood only through their intertextual relationship to the Bible or historical context. The Qur'an not only speaks, it also remains silent through meaningful pauses. 

It is composed in rhyming prose. Its sound, rhythm and internal beat create a resonant space when recited—not just for the ears, but for the heart. Content and form are inseparably linked in the Qur'an. 

Context that a machine cannot grasp

Every person has their own individual relationship to the Qur’an, and this is reflected in its translations. In German-speaking countries, for example, there are two distinct approaches. The first is based in philology, often written by Arabists or Orientalists. They view the Qur'an as a literary or historical document but often overlook its spiritual and poetic character. 

The second approach is taken by those within the faith, particularly devout Muslims. These translators emphasise their own limitations: they do not speak of "translation" but of an approximate rendering of meaning, either from reverence or theological consistency. How could a human being translate the word of God? 

As a result, such translations are often expansive and explanatory, furnished with footnotes in which semantic variants are expounded. It is difficult to render any single Arabic word unambiguously in German.

Whoever translates the Qur'an translates themselves along with it. Through the international research project "The Global Qur'an" at the University of Freiburg, this is made particularly clear. The project demonstrates that every Qur'an translation reflects not only linguistic precision or theological intention, but also political context, cultural influences and historical background, taking into account colonialism, migration, educational policy, censorship or missionary conflicts. 

Qur'an translations are not only responses to the text, but to a world in which this text is spoken anew. It is precisely this contextuality that no artificial intelligence can grasp, because it does not live in a social space, has no history and knows no cultural or theological memory, only stored data. 

The temptation of perfection

AI promises precision. It delivers, we are led to believe, no approximate results. In truth, we are dealing with programmed algorithms and probabilities with high statistical weighting. There is no exact language, not even in everyday life. The sentence "I love X" can have a multitude of meanings, depending on who says it when, how and why. Ambiguity, particularly in the Qur'an, is part of the Qur'an. Not every ambiguity can be eliminated. Faith lives through that which cannot be unambiguously explained.

When we "flatten" the Qur'an, clean it up algorithmically, reduce its multivocality to make it more "comprehensible", we lose it as the text it is. It becomes tendentious and ideologically narrowed. The surface becomes clearer, but the depth is lost. 

It cannot be denied, however, that AI enables new forms of religious practice. Muslims worldwide use apps to determine prayer times and the Qibla, the direction of prayer, or to learn how to recite the Qur'an. Some programs unlock Hadith collections or provide answers to everyday questions. 

These programs promote and democratise access to knowledge. The point is not to demonise AI wholesale, but to ascertain exactly what is at stake. AI programs make many things easier, but they cannot replace spiritual life. They are aids, not authority, and they pose the danger that religion is reduced to function: retrievable, available and consumable. Smooth, objective, unambiguous and ultimately independent of humans. 

The Qur'an is a revelation for people, to put it in religious terms, precisely for the deepening of one's own humanity. 

An AI does not know that it knows something; it can defeat a human at a game of chess, but it does not know that it is playing chess. It can analyse the language of the Qur'an, capture it philologically and transfer it into another language, but it cannot receive the Qur'an. Islam is not an instruction manual, but a path. A surrender that cannot be programmed. The question of God is not an algorithmic one, but an existential call of the heart. 

For Islamic theology, this means that AI must be confronted, not as an opponent, but as a dialogue partner. Islamic theology must not allow itself to be seduced. It must not believe that the "best" answer is always the truest. It must continue to ask: "what is a human being? What is truth? And what does it mean to translate?"