What I Shared at Cambridge Muslim College About Islamic Computing

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:15:00 +0100

I recently gave a Cambridge Muslim College talk on Islamic Computing built around a simple question: how can Muslims build technology, research, and institutions that genuinely benefit people? The session was for students thinking seriously about service, sacred knowledge, careers, entrepreneurship, and the changing role of AI in how people learn and search.

My main argument was straightforward. The future of beneficial Muslim technology is not only about launching more apps. It is about building people, teams, research capability, trustworthy systems, and institutions that help Muslims gain knowledge, build discipline, and live with clearer purpose.

If you want the full deck, the and are now available on the site.

Cambridge Muslim College Talk on Islamic Computing: the central message

The talk began with a hadith often quoted, but not always applied seriously to our work:

“…the best of people are those most beneficial to people.”

That was the lens for everything that followed. Many Muslims today are trying to reconcile several commitments at once: Islamic learning, family, community responsibility, work, and the desire to contribute meaningfully. My message was that these do not need to remain separate boxes. They can be organised around one question:

How can I become more beneficial to people in a way that Allah accepts?

For some people, that may look like teaching. For others, scholarship, charity, product building, community organising, design, research, or entrepreneurship. The form may differ, but the standard remains the same: sincere service combined with serious competence.

My journey and why it shaped this talk

Part of the session was personal. After engineering, I once wanted to step away and study Islam full-time. When I asked my ustadh for advice, he redirected me toward engineering and urged me to think about creating impact for the Ummah through the skills Allah had already opened for me.

That advice stayed with me.

One lesson I shared with CMC students is that serving Islam does not always mean leaving your field. Sometimes it means purifying your intention, deepening your expertise, and using your existing edge in service of something greater. By “edge”, I mean the combination of strengths, training, temperament, opportunities, and doors Allah has opened for you.

This also shaped how I think about istikharah. It is not passive waiting. It means making dua, taking mashwarah seriously, acting responsibly, and accepting that the outcome belongs to Allah.

What Greentech taught me about building for the Ummah

I also spoke about Greentech Apps Foundation and what that journey taught me.

Before Greentech, there were early attempts that did not become sustainable. That mattered because it taught me a hard truth: good intention is necessary, but it is not enough. If we want to serve the Ummah seriously, we also need clarity, execution, teamwork, consistency, and institutional thinking.

Greentech began by responding to very practical problems in the Islamic app space:

poor-quality apps
inappropriate or distracting ads
weak user experience
unclear trust in content

The response was not complicated in theory, but it required discipline in practice: build ad-free products, care about design, treat reliability seriously, and make trust central.

Over time, the project grew into something bigger. What starts as a product often has to become an institution if it is going to last. Volunteers, charity registration, first hires, better process, and long-term commitment all matter because beneficial work needs structure around it.

Today, Greentech has reached millions of users worldwide, alhamdulillah. But the deeper lesson is not growth for its own sake. It is that scale without trust is hollow, and trust is built slowly through accuracy, quality, humility, and consistency.

Why research matters in Islamic technology

One of the strongest points I wanted to make in the Cambridge Muslim College lecture was that service should not be built on assumptions.

Research is a discipline of listening. Whether you are building an app, running an institution, teaching students, or designing a programme, you need to understand what people are actually struggling with rather than what you imagine they need.

This is one reason my academic work and Greentech work reinforce each other. Academia sharpens methods, evidence, and critical thinking. Product and community work expose real needs, real constraints, and real beneficiaries. The best work happens when these two worlds inform each other.

I used the example of research into Islamic lifestyle applications and broader Greentech survey work to show that the real needs often go beyond surface-level feature requests. The recurring needs are deeper:

knowledge
discipline
support

That changes the kinds of questions we should ask. The challenge is not only how to provide access to information. The challenge is how to help people understand, practise, remain consistent, and live around a mission.

From Islamic apps to Islamic Computing

This is where the talk moved beyond a narrow app discussion.

The first generation of Islamic apps did something important: they gave Muslims access to Qur’an, hadith, duas, prayer times, and searchable resources on their phones. That was a major service.

But access is not the end goal.

The next stage is broader and more demanding. I described it as Islamic Computing: using computing, design, data, AI, and research to help Muslims learn, understand, search, connect, and apply Islamic knowledge responsibly.

That means asking harder questions:

How do Muslims actually learn?
Why do people struggle with consistency?
How should technology support khushu’, understanding, and reflection rather than only engagement?
How do we move from information to transformation?
How do we build institutions around this work so it lasts?

This is also why I spoke about mission-driven Muslims. Technology is most useful when it serves people who are trying to organise their lives around a meaningful purpose, not merely consume more content.

AI, search, and the future of Islamic knowledge

Another major theme in the talk was the future of search.

For more than two decades, search engines trained people to think in keywords and links. That is changing. AI systems are moving people toward conversational searching, follow-up questions, summaries, and answer-first interfaces.

That shift matters for Muslims because people are already asking AI tools for Islamic information.

This creates opportunity, but it also creates real risk. Islamic knowledge is not the same as asking for restaurant suggestions or travel advice. It requires sources, context, humility, nuance, and scholar-guided evaluation.

That is why I argued for a simple principle:

AI drafts. Humans review. Scholars guide.

In other words, speed is not the highest value in Islamic technology. Trust, correctness, transparency, adab, and responsible oversight matter more.

I also spoke briefly about SearchDeen and the wider challenge of building next-generation Islamic search systems. If search is changing globally, then Islamic search must evolve too. But it should evolve with rigour, not hype.

Five practical takeaways I shared with students

To keep the session practical, I ended with advice that applies well beyond technology:

Serve people so they truly benefit. Work should not just look impressive. It should solve real problems and improve real lives.
Identify your edge. Know the strengths and opportunities Allah has placed in your path and build from them.
Build one useful skill deeply. Depth is more valuable than scattered ambition.
Find sincere people. Good company raises both standards and intention.
Do the work with ihsan. Good intention is not an excuse for poor execution. Quality, care, and trust are part of service.

I also added one more point that matters a great deal today: build institutions, not only projects. Projects can inspire. Institutions endure.

Questions that stayed with me after the session

A good talk is rarely only about the slides. It is also about the questions it leaves behind. The CMC audience made me think again about several live questions:

How can Muslim students avoid splitting their lives into “religious” and “professional” compartments?
What would it look like for more Muslims to enter research, design, product, and AI work with service to the Ummah in mind?
How do we build trustworthy Islamic AI without reducing scholarship to a thin review layer?
What kinds of institutions need to exist if beneficial Muslim technology is going to mature over the next decade?

These are not questions for one organisation alone. They are questions for a generation.

FAQ

What was the Cambridge Muslim College talk about?

The talk was about Islamic Computing, Greentech, and how Muslims can build technology, research, and institutions that serve people with sincerity, quality, and long-term responsibility.

Why use the phrase “Islamic Computing” instead of just “Islamic apps”?

Because the challenge is now wider than app development. It includes search, AI, design, data, research, evaluation, governance, and the institutions needed to sustain beneficial work.

What was the main lesson from Greentech’s journey?

That sincere service needs more than good intention. It needs clear problem selection, trust, quality, teamwork, consistency, and institutional thinking.

How should Muslims think about AI in Islamic knowledge work?

AI can assist, but it should not be treated as self-authenticating. Systems need source-grounding, transparent limits, human review, and scholar guidance.

Where can I find the slides from the Cambridge Muslim College lecture?

You can view the canonical or download the .

In summary

My Cambridge Muslim College talk on Islamic Computing was really about a broader responsibility: using our skills, research, institutions, and technologies to build what benefits people. If Muslims are serious about the future, we should not aim only to consume better tools. We should aim to become better builders, researchers, teachers, and institution-makers in service of Allah and the Ummah.

Entrepreneurship | Dr Riasat Islam