Campaign launched to fund a conversational AI platform where the world can interact with and learn from the teachings of Iranian-American Scholar, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, who died in 2020

Washington, DC; Oct 26, 2021— Today, the teachings of Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar (1938-2020), maverick female Islamic scholar, come to life at Project Voice X in Destin, Florida. Her descendants launched a fundraising campaign to use 21st century interactive voice technology to preserve the lifetime of scholarship from centuries-old Islamic wisdom. Dr. Bakhtiar, a renowned Chicago-based Iranian-American Scholar and pioneer in Islamic spirituality and Quranic critical thinking, is the inspiration behind the groundbreaking project, known as the Laleh Knowledge Lake (LKL). In 2007, she published the first critical translation of the Quran into English by a woman. When completed, the LKL will be a cutting-edge tool to bring ancient wisdom and knowledge about Islam and Sufism to a new generation of Muslims and Islamic scholars. The LKL project is spearheaded by Dr. Laleh's 3 children through the Institute of Traditional Psychoethics & Guidance (ITPG), which she founded, in partnership with IVOW AI, an AI-driven platform that helps companies and organizations generate culturally intelligent adaptive content.

“Our mother left such a valuable body of work through her letters, notes, videos, podcasts, emails, social media posts, books, lectures, interviews and more,” said Davar Ardalan, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar's daughter, ITPG Board member and founder of IVOW AI. “That's why we are creating an AI-ready, public data source, or a ‘Knowledge Lake,' to preserve and future-proof the timeless and timely wisdom of the late scholar Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, and my beloved mother, who passed away exactly one year before the start of this campaign.”

The LKL project was created by Davar, along with her brother and sister, Karim Ardalan and Mani Ardalan Farhadi, who are also ITPG Board members, to fulfill their mother's final request to share her writings and reflections with the world. Containing articles, books, interviews, and recitations of the Quran as well as other Islamic poetry, the LKL is designed to preserve and perpetuate the wealth of Dr. Bakhtiar's knowledge and insights into the deeply spiritual workings of the Islamic faith. When completed, the LKL will become the basis for an “AI Sage” with conversational abilities comparable to Siri or Alexa. Except, instead of asking about the weather or directions, you can ask Laleh for a recitation from the Quran, or for an inspirational quote from an ancient Islamic sage.

To bring the LKL fully to life, Dr. Bakhtiar's Institute seeks to raise $25,000. These much-needed funds will pay for data scientists to synthesize the thousands of data points in Dr. Bakhtiar's research so they can be shared through AI technology. The Institute of Traditional Psychoethics & Guidance is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and donations to support the LKL are tax-deductible.

To see a short demo of what the LKL can provide, visit: https://www.lalehbakhtiar.com/laleh-knowledge-lake.html

To make a financial contribution to support the completion of the LKL, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/manage/Preservation-of-culture-with-ai

“The LKL will guide people to lead a radically new life by attaining ‘spiritual intelligence' which is not ‘artificial,' said Daisy Khan, Founder of WISE, Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, ahead of the fundraising campaign launch. “An intelligence that is derived from a culturally rich, living tradition of knowledge sharing passed on by sages of wisdom and not datapoints of information.”

According to Mohammad H. Faghfoory, Professor and Director of Graduate Program in Islamic Studies at George Washington University, “The thought that [Dr. Bakhtiar's] work and voice can be shared for the ages through data and applied artificial intelligence is simply a marvel and something Laleh herself would have welcomed for she was also ahead of her time.”

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Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar (July 29, 1938 - October 18, 2020) was a writer, translator, editor, Islamic and Sufi scholar who wrote and edited more than 100 books. Her translation of the Quran, published in 2007, is widely renowned as the first critical translation of the Quran into English by a woman. Laleh dedicated more than 50 years of her life to the study of the mystical or Sufi dimensions of Islam and to revisiting Islamic texts from a Muslim woman's perspective. She was the Founder and President of the non-profit Institute of Traditional Psychoethics and Guidance and Scholar-in-Residence at Kazi Publications in Chicago.