The Transformation of Islamic Legal Principles in Contemporary National Legislation: A Comparative Analysis of Legal Harmonization
Keywords:
Islamic Law; Codification; National Legislation; Comparative Law; Legal CertaintyAbstract
Muslim-majority states no longer apply Islamic law as a jurists’ discourse but as state-enacted legislation, so that the resulting norms derive their binding force from the constitution rather than from scholarly authority. In Indonesia this transformation has proceeded through at least four different channels, each with its own criterion of validity, producing a layered normativity that threatens legal certainty. This study explains how Islamic legal principles acquire state validity, identifies the structural pathologies of that process, and proposes an operational standard for assessing the quality of legal harmonization. The research is normative juridical and doctrinal, combining statutory, conceptual, and case approaches with a functional comparison of Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Egypt, and Pakistan, supported by a socio-legal reading and by maqasid reasoning as an internal normative framework. Transformation operates through substantive codification, referential incorporation of fatwa, jurisdictional transfer, and asymmetric territorial regulation. Indonesia harmonizes purposively rather than textually, yet three pathologies persist: an unsettled validity channel for fatwa, hierarchical and horizontal disharmony among instruments, and an unresolved rights-compatibility gap. The comparison shows that the decisive variable is not the volume of Islamic content but the allocation of authority to determine compliance and the reviewability of that determination. Harmonization should be tested against four cumulative criteria, namely constitutional validity, purposive justification, institutional competence, and empirically verified non-discriminatory benefit.
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