Call for Papers: Muslims in ML Workshop co-located with NeurIPS 2025

We are pleased to announce the 5th Muslims in Machine Learning (MusIML) Workshop, which will take place at NeurIPS 2025 on Tuesday December 2nd, 2025, in San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, USA. This workshop aims to amplify the development and use of machine learning (ML) in Muslim communities including Muslim-majority countries and strategies for global societal impact through AI and ML.

Workshop Overview

The MusIML workshop serves as a platform for researchers and practitioners to explore the intersection of machine learning, AI, and Muslim communities. Our mission is to promote high-quality research that not only fosters growth within Muslim communities but also advances strategies to improve fairness, inclusion, and ethical AI. We encourage contributions that address these challenges and highlight how ML can be a tool for positive change, especially for Muslims in both Muslim-majority countries and global communities.

Workshop Tracks

Track 1: ML research addressing challenges faced by Muslim communities and research related to Islamic contexts

This track is open to all researchers, regardless of religious or ethnic background, and encourages submissions that promote the use of ML to support and empower Muslim communities globally, including in Muslim-majority countries. Published and/or In-progress work is welcome. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

• Growth of Muslims in ML: Initiatives that expand educational and professional opportunities for Muslims in ML, promote access, and encourage representation in the field.
• ML for Social Good: Using ML/AI to engage Muslim youth, promote community outreach, enhance societal well-being, and improve governance, healthcare, or education in Muslim communities.
• Language and Speech Technologies: Advancements in tools for languages spoken in Muslim communities, such as Arabic, Urdu, and Persian.
• Computational Analysis of Islamic Scriptures: Digital humanities research, including computational studies of Hadith or Quranic texts.
• Data Collection and Representation: Rich datasets from diverse Muslim communities.
• Mitigating Algorithmic Bias and Discrimination: Research exploring strategies that mitigate algorithmic bias and related topics that impact Muslim individuals and communities.

Track 2: Machine learning research by Muslim authors

This track invites submissions from researchers who self-identify as Muslim. Published and/or In-progress work is welcome. We encourage work that explores the frontiers of machine learning and AI, including but not limited to:

• LLMs, MLLMs, Generative AI: Research focused on large language models, generative AI systems, cutting-edge vision models, self-supervised learning, and advancements in multilingual capabilities, especially for languages spoken by Muslim communities.
• Applications of ML: In vision, language, speech, and audio.
• Machine Learning for Society: For example, in education, health, climate, and social sciences.
• Probabilistic Methods: Deep learning, reinforcement learning, and optimization.
• Social and Economic Aspects of ML: Fairness, interpretability, human-AI interaction, privacy, safety, and strategic behavior.
• Federated Learning and AI-driven Innovations: For healthcare and smart cities and public services such as governance, energy, and traffic management.
• Evaluation Methodologies and Scalable Infrastructures
• Robotics and NeuroAI: Including research at the intersection of neuroscience, AI, and cognitive science.
• AI Ethics and Safety: Data privacy, interpretable AI, green AI, red teaming in AI, etc.

Track 3: Machine learning competition proposals for social impact in Muslim communities

This track invites proposals for machine learning competitions that address challenges relevant to Muslim communities worldwide. Submissions should outline a competition concept that promotes fairness, inclusivity, and responsible AI, and may focus on areas such as equitable healthcare access, culturally aware NLP tasks, or AI for social good in Muslim-majority regions. Submit your proposals via: [email protected]

Submission Guidelines

Tracks 1 and 2

We invite submissions of short papers (up to four pages) including all figures and tables but excluding references in PDF format. An optional appendix can be included. The appendix will not be considered in the review process.
Papers may have been previously published or be under review elsewhere. To prepare your submission, please use the LaTeX style files for NeurIPS 2025: NeurIPS 2025 LaTeX style file. All submissions must follow NeurIPS Author Guidelines. Submissions must be anonymized, please refrain from including personally identifiable information. Submissions will be reviewed in a double-blind setting. All submissions will be peer-reviewed through OpenReview.

Accepted papers will be showcased in a poster session, and selected authors will present lightning talks. Participants will also have the chance to contribute in a joint poster session with other NeurIPS affinity groups. Best Paper Awards will be given to the paper that shows societal impact.

Track 3

Competition proposals must describe the problem statement, dataset considerations (including ethical sourcing), evaluation criteria, and potential positive impact. Selected competitions may be featured as part of the workshop program or developed in collaboration with MusIML partners following NeurIPS. Proposals should be no more than two pages.

Important Dates

• Initiate call for papers: July 20, 2025
• Visa-friendly submission deadline: August 22, 2025 (abstract, August 15, 2025)
• Visa-friendly notification of decision: August 31, 2025
• Regular submission deadline: September 15, 2025
• Regular notification of decision: September 30, 2025
• Camera Ready submission: October 14, 2025
• Workshop: December 2, 2025

Submission Platform

All submissions will be managed through OpenReview.

Workshop Goals

• Build a global network of Muslim researchers and professionals in ML.
• Promote research that addresses biases and challenges faced by Muslim communities.
• Provide mentorship and networking opportunities for researchers, particularly from Muslim-majority countries.
• Create space for discussions on ethical AI, inclusivity, and decolonizing AI research.

Join Us

We welcome all researchers— irrespective of their religious/ethnic background —to submit their work and contribute to the development and application of ML in Muslims Countries and Muslim Communities globally. For more information, please visit our community page.
For any questions, email the organizers at: [email protected].
Also, sign up to [email protected] mailing list by filling out the form to follow updates about our workshop.
Also, join Muslims in ML Slack group.

Website theme adapted from CIOL Website (GitHub)