Glossary: the vocabulary of AI and Islamic law, from agent to taqlid

A to G

Agent (AI). Software that takes a goal, plans steps, uses tools and checks results with little human prompting between steps. Contrast with chatbot. See what is a Shariah agent.

Accountability (named). The commitment that a specific person at an organisation answers for an AI system's behaviour. The seventh point of the Shariah Agent Standard.

Business-activity screen. The part of a Shariah equity screen that excludes companies whose core business is impermissible, regardless of financial ratios.

Chatbot. An AI that answers from what its model absorbed in training, without retrieving sources at the time of the question. Fluent and unverifiable.

Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah. Egypt's official fatwa institution. Issued fatwa 22255 on AI and fatwas and the January 2026 ruling on AI and Quranic interpretation. See can AI issue a fatwa.

Decline behaviour. A system's ability to say "no relevant source found" instead of generating an answer. The fourth commitment of the Standard.

Fatwa. A considered answer to a question of Islamic law by a qualified scholar. Carries the scholar's authority and accountability; not binding like a court judgement.

Fiqh. Islamic jurisprudence: the scholarly discipline of deriving rulings from the sources. Interpretive, hence the existence of schools.

Grounding. Building an AI so it answers only from passages retrieved from a defined library at query time, shown to the user. Also called retrieval-augmented generation. See grounded AI.

H to P

Hallucination. An AI producing fluent, confident content with no basis in its sources, including invented citations. A known failure of chatbots on religious questions.

Hand-off. Directing the user to a qualified human scholar for anything consequential. The fifth commitment.

Ja'fari school. The school of jurisprudence followed by Twelver Shia Muslims. Rulings are followed through taqlid of a qualified living jurist.

Madhhab. A school of Islamic jurisprudence. The major Sunni schools are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali; the Ja'fari school is followed by Twelver Shia.

Marja' (marja' al-taqlid). In the Ja'fari school, a senior jurist whose rulings a layperson follows. Conditions are set out in Ayatollah Sistani's Islamic Laws, Chapter One.

MCP (Model Context Protocol). An open standard published by Anthropic in November 2024 that lets AI systems connect to tools and data through one logged interface. See AI agents and halal investing.

Methodology (screening). A published set of rules, thresholds and exclusions used to decide whether an investment is Shariah compliant. Written by scholars or index providers; applied by software.

Mufti. A scholar qualified to issue fatwas. Dar al-Ifta's fatwa 22255 lists the qualities required and holds that software cannot be relied on in that role.

Mujtahid. A jurist qualified to derive rulings from the sources independently. In the Ja'fari school, the person one follows in taqlid.

Purification. Giving to charity the portion of investment income attributable to a company's impermissible activity, under a methodology's formula. Arithmetic once the formula is fixed.

R to Z

Retrieval. Searching a defined library for passages relevant to a question, usually by meaning. The first step of a grounded system.

Riba. Interest, or any guaranteed return on a loan of money. Prohibited across schools; the reason screening methodologies test interest-bearing debt and income.

School declaration. Stating or asking which school or methodology an answer applies to. The second commitment.

Shariah. Islamic law as divinely ordained. Human understanding of it is fiqh.

Shariah agent. This site's term for an AI system that retrieves, explains or acts on Islamic rulings or Islamic finance rules. See the home page.

Shariah board. Scholars who approve and supervise an institution's or product's compliance. In Malaysia, backed by a binding national Shariah Advisory Council.

Taqlid. Following the rulings of a qualified jurist without independently deriving them. The ordinary Muslim's relationship to a mufti or marja'.

Tool call. A discrete, logged request from an AI system to an external service (a screening engine, a fatwa database) with a recorded response. The unit of auditability for an agent.

Verdict (screening). The output of a screening methodology for a given security on a given date: typically compliant, non-compliant or doubtful. A report of rule application, not a fatwa.