Recontextualizing Islamic Law in the Digital Era: Challenges and Opportunities for Contemporary Sharia Governance

Abstract

Digital transformation has engendered new challenges for Islamic law and Sharia governance through the emergence of artificial intelligence, fintech, big data, algorithms, digital platforms, and automated decision-making. These developments reveal the limitations of conventional Sharia compliance, which has hitherto focused predominantly on products and contractual structures rather than on technological processes and their broader implications. This study aims to analyze the necessity for recontextualizing Islamic law in the digital era and to develop a contemporary Sharia governance conceptual framework. The study employs a normative juridical method with doctrinal, conceptual, statutory, maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah, and limited comparative approaches. Legal materials and literature are analyzed through normative content analysis and conceptual synthesis. The findings indicate that digital transformation expands the objects of Sharia governance to encompass data, algorithms, technological processes, institutional accountability, and social impact. This study proposes the Maqāṣid-Based Digital Sharia Governance (MDSG) framework, comprising six dimensions: Sharia integrity, algorithmic accountability, data governance, transactional justice, institutional accountability, and maqāṣid impact assessment. This framework shifts the orientation of Sharia compliance from product-based assessment towards sustainable governance of data, processes, systems, decisions, and impacts.