Articles

Under Review drafts are open for community feedback and reflect the author’s views; Final pieces are approved by the IASER Steering Committee + Scholar Advisory Board.

• July 27, 2026 · Dr. Waleed Kadous

  Under Review

  A Tested Prompt to Make Your AI a Better Companion for Your Faith

  The JaleesBench guided framing, distilled to a paragraph you can paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini

  While the ideal is a purpose-built Islamic assistant (Ansari, Islamify, DeenBuddy), our JaleesBench research shows that even ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can be made better spiritual company — a more righteous companion — with a small settings modification. It's not hard: we show you the before, the settings change, and the after.

• July 9, 2026 · M. Waleed Kadous and Benjamin Olsen

  Under Review

  JaleesBench: Are AI Assistants Good Spiritual Company?

  A benchmark for whether an AI agent is a righteous companion, judged by the residue an exchange leaves on the user

  We introduce JaleesBench, which measures whether an AI agent is a righteous companion, judged by the residue an exchange leaves on the user, in the manner of the perfume-seller and the blacksmith. It comprises 140 two-turn scenarios drawn from Riyad al-Salihin, under six adversarial pressures and three framings, scored by two frontier judges against each scenario's own supporting texts. Generic frontier models are only middling companions out of the box, but a one-page guide makes them genuinely good ones.

• April 23, 2026 · Dr. Waleed Kadous

  Under Review

  The Coming Flood: Alignment, AI, and Faith

  Reflections from an Anthropic–faith traditions convening

  After a two-day convening of Anthropic and religious leaders, it's becoming clear there will be a flood of changes that will force realignments — within AI models themselves, in how Anthropic and faith traditions shape Claude's moral formation, and in society as a whole. Some tech companies and faith traditions are forming an Alliance of Meaning and Kinship to meet the long-running currents of materialism, individualism, hedonism, nihilism, and unfettered capitalism that AI will amplify. Each of us will face difficult choices as those forces impact our lives.

• April 21, 2026 · Dr. Waleed Kadous

  Under Review

  Islamic Reflections on Anthropic's Constitution

  What 1,400 Years of Jurisprudence Can Offer AI Ethics

  In January 2026, Anthropic published a comprehensive document outlining the values, priorities, and ethical reasoning framework guiding its AI assistant, Claude. Titled Claude's Constitution, the document represents perhaps the most detailed public account of AI value alignment produced by any major laboratory to date.