A Thousand Minarets, A Million Parameters: Machine Learning Research for Islamic and Muslim-World Challenges

Islamic thought and artificial intelligence (AI) have become an exciting and fast-developing scientific field in an interdisciplinary research context. A keyword query was used to identify 445 documents from Scopus-indexed journals that included AI/ML and Islamic jurisprudential concepts (maqasid, fiqh, fatwa, halal, Islamophobia, etc.). The publication trend is analysed, key sources and authors identified, and the thematic development of this field explored, using the bibliometrix R-package. Annual output surged from 36 documents in 2020 to 159 in 2025, with a Lotka-curve growth peak around 2024–2025 (K ≈ 449). The vast majority of this research is led by scholars from Muslim-majority countries, notably Indonesia, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, with Qatar and the United Kingdom emerging as the leading countries in citation impact. Thematic clusters range from Qur'anic NLP, Islamic fintech, and AI ethics governance to halal tourism, supply chain, and Islamophobia detection. New frontiers encompass Shariah-grounded AI ethics benchmarking and LLM-based Islamic jurisprudence assistants.