Sultan Nazrin warns youths most vulnerable to AI disinformation
KUALA LUMPUR: Sermons will not stop youths from being brainwashed or recruited by AI algorithms and extremists who come under the guise of religiosity, says the Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Shah.
“If all we offer in return is a sermon young people find remote, in a language they have stopped speaking, delivered inside a building they have stopped entering, then we have come armed with a manuscript to a contest being fought on iPhones.”
The Perak Ruler said teens are “being spoken to, patiently, persuasively, and persistently, by a voice telling them that the world is divided into ‘them’ and ‘us’; that the neighbour is their enemy; that faith demands rage”.
“That voice is not a scholar. It is not an imam, a priest, a rabbi or a monk. It is an algorithm. And that algorithm is being deployed for profit by people who profess the very faith they are weaponising,” the Ruler said during the Third International Summit of Religious Leaders here yesterday, which was also attended by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Sultan Nazrin said the world today has the largest number of youths at any one time in history, numbering at 1.8 billion.
With Muslim youths being the youngest of all faith communities, they are the most vulnerable to digital manipulation.
“The violent extremist and the religious teacher are competing for the same young hearts in the same sacred vocabulary.
“The extremist does not approach the young with a dry political manifesto. He comes clothed in scripture, quoting the very verses we quote.
“He offers the sense of belonging that comes from having an imagined enemy,” the Ruler said.
The Sultan warned that AI-generated disinformation, dressed up in the vocabulary of grievance, now reaches hundreds of millions of young people at a scale and speed no traditional sermon could ever match.
“The argument for division is being won by voices we do not control, on platforms we do not own, in a language we have been too slow to learn.”
To engage the young, the Perak Ruler said that religious leadership must be both rooted and responsive.
“We often speak of young people as the future. But let us think about what this quietly implies: that their time has not yet come, that the present moment belongs to those already holding authority.”
Sultan Nazrin said that the youths, in many ways, “are ahead of us, more connected across borders, more at ease with difference than their elders ever were”.
“They are organising, innovating, mobilising movements, and reshaping public discourse in the digital and physical spaces we share.
“Our task should be to nurture their idealism, to keep it from souring into cynicism or being captured by those who would turn its energy to ruinous ends,” the Ruler said.
Echoing this call for unity and a harmonious future, Anwar said in his speech that Malaysia serves as a model of peace to the Muslim world.
“Islam is the official religion in the Federal Constitution, but we are a multi-religious country.
“Every single member of our society and every citizen feels safe, is equally protected and believes that this spirit is an example to humanity,” he said.
However, he said it is alarming that religion is often politicised.
“Please acknowledge the fact that there have been major transgressions in the name of religion, which is supposed to promote peace,” the Prime Minister said.
Religion has instead been misused to promote discord, intolerance and injustice while condoning violence, Anwar said.
He pointed out that he had attended Wesak and Thaipusam celebrations recently.
“Different religious celebrations do not deter us from being good Muslims. Interfaith dialogue completes the ecosystem. It does not in any way deter us as steadfast practising Muslims,” he said.
