Religious Leaders Key To Countering AI Disinformation Targeting Youth - Sultan Nazrin

KUALA LUMPUR, June 12 (Bernama) -- The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Shah has urged religious leaders to counter artificial intelligence (AI)-driven disinformation that is reaching young people at a scale and speed no sermon ever could, warning that algorithms now “preach” more persuasively than authorities of faith.

Speaking at the 3rd International Summit of Religious Leaders here today, he said the battle for youth engagement is increasingly being fought on platforms “we do not own” and in a “language we have been too slow to learn”.

He added that many young people, already burdened by climate anxiety, conflict and economic uncertainty, are also searching for meaning, belonging and trust.

Thus, noting that nearly 1.8 billion youth constitute the largest generation in history, with Muslims forming the youngest major faith community, the Perak Ruler said institutions must stop speaking of youth only as the future and instead recognise they are already “organising, innovating and reshaping public discourse”.

“We have spent a great deal of time talking about young people, and far too little time listening to them and sharing power with them. The phrase the young peacebuilders themselves now use is exact, and it should sting us: they ask to be treated as co-creators, not consultants.

“I put it to this assembly that faith leaders are uniquely placed to close that gap,” he said.

Sultan Nazrin said empowering young people and engaging them as partners was crucial, as violent extremists and religious teachers were competing for the same young hearts, but extremists did not approach them with a dry political manifesto.

“He comes clothed in scripture, quoting the very verses we quote. He invokes the same hunger for meaning, the same clarity of purpose, the same ache for dignity, and with great skill bends it away from mercy and towards grievance. 

“He offers the sense of belonging that comes from having an imagined enemy. 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,” he said. 

On the role of faith in the digital age, Sultan Nazrin said Pope Leo XIV last month issued his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the age of AI, in which he believes a Catholic pontiff and a Muslim imam can speak with one voice: “the screen can deliver information, but only a human being can deliver meaning”.

He said that, according to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, only seven in 10 people globally were unwilling or hesitant to trust someone with different values or beliefs, while only one in three believed the next generation would be better off.

“This is where religious leadership has a vital role to play. At its best, religion teaches us to look beyond the self. It reminds us that human beings are not merely consumers, competitors or avatars in a digital crowd, but persons of dignity and moral worth,” he said. 

To engage the young, Sultan Nazrin said religious leadership must be both rooted and responsive because communities need the wisdom, discipline and moral depth that tradition provides. 

“Responsive because each generation encounters new realities and asks new questions. The task is not to dilute faith for our youth, nor to abandon inherited wisdom, but to bring that wisdom into living conversation with the conditions of the present world,” he added.

Also present at the event were Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Muslim World League (MWL) secretary-general Datuk Seri Sheikh Dr Mohammad Abdul Kareem Al-Issa and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Religious Affairs) Datuk Dr Zulkifli Hasan.

The summit, jointly organised by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) and the MWL, brought together about 1,500 scholars, policymakers and religious leaders from 31 countries under the theme “Religious Leaders and Youth Empowerment: Advancing Coexistence and Social Harmony”.

-- BERNAMA