RETHINKING THE CHALLENGE OF Ai: TECH SOVEREIGNTY, ISLAM & THE INDIVIDUAL

Organised by
Islamic Courses
with the support of
Ebrahim College
:
RETHINKING THE CHALLENGE OF Ai: TECH SOVEREIGNTY, ISLAM & THE INDIVIDUAL
With
Dr. Waleed Kadous
[
Creator of Ansari, an Islamic AI assistant, USA
]
Dr Boumediene Hamzi
[
University College London [UCL]
]
Dr Syed Mustafa Ali
[
The Open University
]
Date and time
: Tuesday 7
th July 2026, 6pm - 8pm
Venue
:
Ebrahim College, 399-401 High Street, Stratford, London E15 4QZ
[Live in-person at the college and online]
[All welcome,
FREE ENTRANC
E
but
pre-registration
]
About the speakers:
*Dr. Waleed Kadous[Creator of Ansari, an Islamic AI assistant, USA]
- Dr. Waleed Kadous is a leading expert in artificial intelligence with more than 25 years of experience building and deploying AI systems. He completed his PhD in AI in 2000 and has held senior leadership positions at some of the world's most influential technology companies. Dr. Kadous founded Google's Android Location and Sensing team—the group responsible for the widely recognized “blue dot”—and later led systems architecture and machine learning initiatives at Uber. He has also served as Chief Scientist at multiple startups and led AI Engineering at Canva. His work is reflected in more than 40 patents spanning artificial intelligence and related technologies. In recent years, Dr. Kadous has focused on the intersection of AI, Islam, and ethics. He is the creator of Ansari, an Islamic AI assistant, and the developer of the AI for Imams course, which seeks to equip Muslim religious leaders with the tools to navigate emerging technological challenges. His work reflects a deep commitment to ensuring that AI is developed and applied in ways that are ethically grounded and socially beneficial.
*Dr Boumediene Hamzi [University College London [UCL]]
- Dr Boumediene Hamzi, a member of the The Alan Turing Institute who recently completed our postgraduate certificate programme in Islamic philosophy, has recently published the following paper exploring Islam and artificial intelligence: ‘Redefining Reality: An Islamic Metaphysical Critique of AI’s Data-Centric Worldview’, in Philosophies (2026). Boumediene Hamzi has spearheaded a research group focusing on Islam and artificial intelligence, which has now held 3 conferences. He is a currently working on an edited volume on Islam and artificial intelligence. He was also a co-author of the following papers: Fatima Ali, Karim Bouzoubaa, Frank Gelli, Boumediene Hamzi & Suhair Khan, ‘Islamic Ethics and AI: An Evaluation of Existing Approaches to AI using Trusteeship Ethics’, in Philosophy & Technology, vol. 38 and the following paper of his is soon to be printed in the Journal of Shi’a Islamic Studies: ‘Theistic and Non-Theistic Ontologies in Comparison: A Critical Re-Evaluation of Comparative Studies between Mull? ?adr? and Heidegger’. He and Ambar Khawaja also co-authored an intriguing read, People are Asleep: A Spiritual Allegory of the Simulated Real, which explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and traditional Islamic spirituality.
Dr Syed Mustafa Ali
[
The Open University]
- Dr Ali is Lecturer and Convenor of the Critical Information Studies (CrIS) research group in the School of Computing and Communications at The Open University. His transdisciplinary research focuses on developing a hermeneutic framework grounded in Heideggerian phenomenology, critical race theory and postcolonial/decolonial thought, and using this framework to explore how race, religion, politics, and ethics are entangled with various technological (more specifically, computing and IT) phenomena. In this connection, he has published work in the areas of Decolonial Computing and Algorithmic Racism, interrogating Trans-/Posthumanism, the discourse of Big Data, internet governance, and AI, the latter of which is increasingly explored through the entanglement of political economy, political ecology, and political theology.
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ALL WELCOME - FREE ENTRANCE! PRE-REGISTRATION ONLY!
DEADLINE FOR BOOKINGs APPLY after which registrations will close!
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