JM Scholar is a study aid, not a muftī.

Last updated: April 2026

JM Scholar is an AI-powered study companion built into the Joyful Muslims app. It helps you explore the books in our library, ask follow-up questions, and connect ideas across classical texts. This page explains what it is, how it works, and — most importantly — what it is not.

What JM Scholar is

• A learning aid grounded in the Qurʾān, the authentic Sunnah, and mainstream Sunni scholarship (the four madhāhib).
• A way to quickly locate relevant passages, translations, and scholarly commentary from the books we publish.
• Useful for understanding the arguments of classical scholars such as al-Ghazālī, Ibn Kathīr, Ibn Hishām, Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Nawawī, and al-Dhahabī.

What JM Scholar is not

• Not a muftī. It does not issue fatāwā. It cannot take the place of a qualified scholar who knows you and your circumstances.
• Not a source of legal, medical, psychological, or financial advice. For personal matters, speak to a qualified professional or your local imam.
• Not infallible. Large language models can make mistakes — including misquoting verses, mixing up hadith numbering, and over-confidently summarising views it has compressed. We train it to cite its sources, but you should verify what matters.
• Not a spiritual authority. Reading a book or asking an AI does not make one a scholar. Traditional Islamic knowledge is taught through teachers, not apps.

How it works

We use two third-party AI providers, named in the app's consent sheet and in our Privacy Policy:

• Anthropic (Claude) — powers the JM Scholar chat. Your question and (when available) the title of the book you are currently listening to are sent over an encrypted connection, along with a system prompt that anchors the model in the Sunni scholarly tradition and asks it to cite verses, hadith, and classical sources where possible.
• OpenAI (GPT-4) — used in translation drafting and verification. Not used for live JM Scholar chat at the time of writing; if that changes, this page and the in-app consent sheet will be updated before any migration.

On first use, the app asks for your explicit permission before sending anything to a third-party AI, per Apple App Store Review Guideline 5.1.2(i). You can revoke this permission at any time in Settings → Privacy → JM Scholar AI. The rest of the app continues to work when Scholar is off.

• We do not store the content of your questions or the answers beyond what is needed for conversation context and service operation.
• We log the length of your questions and model usage statistics (so we can measure quality and cost) but not the text itself for training purposes.
• Your questions are not used to train the underlying AI models — neither Anthropic nor OpenAI train on API data by default, and we do not opt in.
• We do not send your name, email address, Apple ID, or payment information to the AI providers.

See our Privacy Policy for full detail.

When to ask a real scholar instead

Please do not rely on JM Scholar for:

• Rulings on personal worship, marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody, business contracts, or any legal matter.
• Questions where your specific situation, intention, or state changes the answer — that is exactly where a trusted scholar who knows you is irreplaceable.
• Sensitive or controversial topics where misunderstanding can cause harm.

For matters like these, contact your local imam, a trusted muftī, or a scholarly organisation in your madhhab.

Mistakes and corrections

If you spot an error in a JM Scholar answer — an incorrect citation, a misattributed view, or a mistranslation — we want to know. Email [email protected] with the question and the response, and we will investigate and correct our training material and system prompt where appropriate.

Summary

JM Scholar can make the library easier to enter. It cannot replace scholarship, a teacher, or the barakah of sitting with people of knowledge. Use it as an opening, not a conclusion.