Background and Aim: The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has raised profound questions regarding human identity, self-understanding, and existential status in the contemporary world. Within this context, spiritual health, as a foundational dimension of human existence, faces novel theoretical challenges, as most prevailing models presuppose unmediated, autonomous human agency and fail to account for technological existential mediation. Grounded in an Islamic paradigm, this study aims to examine the relationship between spiritual health and AI developments and to propose a theoretical framework for its redefinition within algorithmic ecologies.
Methods: This study adopted a theoretical-conceptual approach utilizing critical analytical and reflexive methods. Accordingly, key concepts related to spiritual health in Islamic scholarship, Tawhidic anthropology, and the existential implications of AI were systematically analyzed and conceptualized.
Results: Findings indicate that AI, transcending mere computational utility, mediates cognitive, perceptual, and hermeneutic processes, thereby eroding human contemplative reasoning (Ta’aqqul) and diminishing the capacity for spiritual mindfulness (Tadhakkur). The pivotal concern of spiritual health in the AI era shifts from merely securing a psychological sense of meaning to preserving “Tawhidic agency” and active engagement within the sovereign realm of the self. Consequently, this study introduces “spiritual discernment” (Furqan), the capacity to distinguish truth from algorithmic simulations, and “digital self-vigilance/accounting” (Muraqaba and Muhasaba) as core pillars of spiritual health, while conceptualizing “existential offloading” as a fundamental risk to genuine human agency.
Conclusion: In the era of AI, spiritual health does not entail passive withdrawal or outright technological rejection, but rather reclaiming agency, safeguarding innate human nature (Fitrah), and pursuing the wholesome life (Hayat Tayyibah) amidst intelligent tools. The primary theoretical contribution of this study lies in shifting the locus of spiritual health from “psychological sense-making” to “safeguarding human dignity, hermeneutic autonomy, and the divine trust”—an approach that opens new horizons in interdisciplinary studies of spiritual health, Islamic anthropology, and the theology of technology.