* AOCE warns against the graveness of ‘singing’ the Qur’an and calls for a legislation to regulate AI uses with sacred text
Over the last few weeks, the Al-Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism (AOCE) has been detecting and investigating what has come to be known as ‘Qur’anic songs’ or ‘singing the Qur’an’, which has marked an extreme way of approaching Qur’anic verses by means of musical composing and singing along Western musical lines and genres in terms of origins, culture, and performance. In so doing, the extremist minds behind these offensive productions allege that they seek ‘innovative’ ways of depicting ‘Qur’anic parables’. These productions are promoted via anonymous AI-based accounts.
The AOCE stresses that the Qur’an is the miraculous revelation of Allah; a doctrine that renders prohibited any musical composing thereof. As a way of deceptively luring the audience to those accounts, their admins cite the prophetic hadith, “He who does not recite the Qur'an in a pleasant tone is not of us”, suggesting a likeness between the meanings of ‘pleasant tone recitation’ and singing. This is but a lie and deception as it falls foul of the semantics of the Arabic words used and the explanatory commentaries by all hadith narrators and commentators in Muslim history. Rather, the Arabic words used mean to recite in a pleasant tone. Abu Mosa Al-Ashaary, a companion of the Prophet, was reciting some Qur’anic verses when the Prophet passed by him, saying, “You have been given a Mizmar (sweet melodious voice) out of the Mazamir of Prophet Dawud (David)”. Other hadith commentators said that the main Arabic misused word in the deceptively cited hadith means to ‘do without’, namely; a Muslim living without the Qur’an or paying no heed thereto would be parting away from what is becoming of a true Muslim.
The AOCE warns of an abusive wave against the Qur’an, Muslims, and, more generally, religions. It is a wave that has started with Qur’an burnings, tear-ups, and manipulated presentation of Qur’anic verses. Being promoted under the pretext of facilitated memorization, this non-Muslim-like wave of composing reveals how ignorant the perpetrators are of the divinely created Qur’anic melodious, intonation, and pitching prerogatives as manifested in the various ways of sound recitation approved by tajweed scholars over centuries. That very wave further ignores the fact and prerogative that the Qur’an has been revealed and learnt, first and foremost, by means of recitation to ensure accurate reception and imitation. After all, that historical well-founded line of read-through of the Qur’an for purposes of learning by heart, education, and exegesis have brough about an almost endless line of great reciter performances from almost all countries, particularly Egypt.
Therefore, the AOCE calls upon the esteemed Legislative Power in Egypt to enact a law to regulate AI uses, in general, and its uses with sacred texts, in particular, to prevent such extremist instances and any reactions thereto. It would be a legislative step that may very well be copied by other countries