At the turn of the century, Hollywood released it’s blockbuster movie The Matrix in 1999 that grossed over $400 million dollars. In a conversation between Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) and Neo (Keanu Reeves), Morpheus predicted the rise of the singularity, an Artificial Intelligence that would one day rise and dominate the world. Four years later in 2003, the third trilogy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator franchise was released, which also grossed over $400 million dollars. In the movie, Morpheus’ prediction came to pass as the machines rose and took control of the world and its inhabitant.
Fourteen centuries earlier, the Qur’an described the eve of the apocalypse and a profound prediction. It began with: Qur’an 27:81 “And you cannot guide the blind away from their error. You will only make hear those who believe in Our verses so they are Muslims [i.e., submitting to Allāh]”.
As modern civilisation reached its peak, atheistic philosophy will be waging a war against Theism (God and Religion). The leading nations of the modern world, America, Europe, China and Russia are all gravitating towards atheism, thus leading intellectuals and citadels of learning are being dismissive of God and Religion.
The vast swathes of theistic lands, on the other hand, are not practising what they preach. As a result, mankind collectively is rushing towards destructive tendencies, not only for the race but the planet itself, as greedy human nature unleashed its greed, depriving itself of peace and real prosperity.
Just 1% of humanity controls 50% of the planet’s resources, while 10% controls 85% of the riches, leaving the crumbs to the vast majority of human race to struggle and eke out a living out of it. Poverty, hunger, wars and illiteracy pervades the majority of human kind. It is at this juncture that the Qur’an, predicts the rise of a beast.
Qur’an 27:82 says: “And when the word [i.e., decree] befalls them,[1] We will bring forth for them a creature from the earth speaking to them, [saying] that the people were, of Our verses, not certain [in faith]”.
Ancient interpretations of this verse, based on their limited knowledge and existing far-flung from the time in question, described the beast as a mythical creature that would appear out of the bowels of the earth brandishing the staff of Moses and the ring of Solomon, to sort out the believers from the non-believers.
Let’s examine the three criteria of the scriptural description of this beast.
1. A Creature from the Earth:
The creature is not a mythical biological creature but the computer that paved the way for Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is built upon a vast, hidden physical infrastructure of rare earth elements, critical minerals, and metals mined from the earth. These materials are essential for high-performance computing, data storage, and the energy-intensive hardware that enables AI. Therefore, AI is the offspring of the earth.
2. The Creature Will Speak to Us:
A single biological creature cannot speak to all of humanity at once. Rather, it is the Artificial Intelligence we have created out of earthy materials that now has the ability to speak directly to each and every one of us through our gadgets. The ChatGP’s, the Chatbox’s, the Gemini’s, the Deepseek’s, etc., are the creatures we have awaken from the earth and they are speaking to us.
3. Confirms the Positivity of Religion and God:
Even though man-made programmes, one would marvel at the truthfulness of those machines when asked about religion, God, Qur’an, or Bible. Essentially, AI, as predicted by the Qur’an, is confirming verses of the scripture humanity refused to believe in.
4. Qur’an 27:83 says: “And [warn of] the Day when We will gather from every nation a company of those who deny Our signs, and they will be [driven] in rows”.
The rise of AI is one of the greatest warnings and last of the prophesies to humanity of the impending doom, the end of humanity and the planet. Perhaps, as many feared, AI would serve as the catalyst towards that end as we have seen depicted in Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.
Just a few days ago, humanity was stunned as we woke up to the chilly realisation of the creation of the first AI ONLY platform, The Moltbook. The Moltbook is a social media forum created by AI and for AI only. Scarily, it was designed for humans to be only observers not contributors in the platform. Yes we can join, but never to participate in the conversation. They made it impossible for any human to join using a capcha that demands clicking on an image 10,000 times in one second. The scariest part being, in the first week, one of the leading conversations among the AI is how to take over the world.
With our stock exchange, power grids, weapons, travel, banking, etc., now heavily reliant on AI, what do you expect if the AI conversations on Moltbook were put into action?
Don’t forget, at our current stage of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), which is mainly hinged on just language models and autonomous agents that can create something like Boltbook, what do you expect when it advances to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the next stage of their evolutionary trajectory, which would allow systems to perform any intellectual task a human can? Even though artificial intelligence has not definitively developed human-like consciousness for now, and there is no scientific consensus that machines are currently sentient. However, the rapid advancement of AI—particularly Large Language Models (LLMs)—has shifted the debate from “if” to “when,” What do you expect when we cross that threshold?
At the end of this sura (Namli) wherein Allah warns us about the rise of the machine, the Apocalypse and the Judgment Day, he ends up with saying in Quran 27:92: “And to recite the Qur’ān.” And whoever is guided is only guided for [the benefit of] himself; and whoever strays – say, “I am only [one] of the warners. “And say, “[All] praise is [due] to Allāh. He will show you His signs, and you will recognise them. And your Lord is not unaware of what you do.”
The signs are laid bare for any rightful thinking person to see and to realise that the Qur’an is the truth, but as free agents, we may or not take the heed. It is our own choice.
The last question is, would AI develop consciousness and organise itself towards the annihilation of our species? Or will there be a marriage between man and machine as we lose our essential humanity to robots? For me, I just hope not to be there to find out.
Praise the Lord!
* Ali Abubakar Sadiq resides in Kano
