Journal of Islamic Law on Digital Economy and Business

Productive waqf governance reform in the digital economy: A comparative legal study

2026-01-07T13:47:26+00:00

Purpose – This study examines and compares the legal and governance frameworks of productive waqf in Indonesia and selected Muslim jurisdictions, such as Malaysia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, to identify the structural determinants of waqf performance. It aims to provide policy-relevant insights for reforming Indonesia’s waqf law within the broader context of Islamic law, governance reform, and the digital economy.
Methodology – This research employs doctrinal and comparative legal methodologies using qualitative analysis. Primary legal sources consist of statutes, regulations, and institutional guidelines governing waqf, while secondary sources include academic literature and official reports. A structured comparative framework was applied to assess regulatory coherence, institutional capacity, stewardship mechanisms, investment governance, and digital governance across jurisdictions.
Findings – The findings reveal that jurisdictions with centralized legal authority and integrated digital governance systems demonstrate comparatively stronger accountability, higher institutional capacity, and more productive utilization of waqf assets. In contrast, Indonesia’s fragmented regulatory structure, uneven nazhir professionalism, conservative investment rules, and limited digital integration constrain productive waqf development.
Implications – This study highlights the need for Indonesia to strengthen institutional coordination, standardize nazhir competency frameworks, expand Shariah-compliant investment instruments, and establish an integrated national digital waqf information system to enhance transparency, efficiency, and sustainability.
Originality – This study contributes original insights by offering a systematic cross-jurisdictional legal comparison and proposing an Integrated Waqf Governance Model that incorporates regulatory governance, institutional capacity, stewardship, and digital governance as key determinants of productive waqf performance in the digital economy era.

Constitutionalizing cybersecurity: Indonesia–Malaysia regulatory convergence through a maqasid al Sharia framework

2026-01-11T12:11:36+00:00

Purpose – This article examines the evolving regulatory architectures of cybersecurity and cyber resilience in Indonesia and Malaysia and proposes harmonization strategies that are both responsive to escalating cyber risks and normatively fair, using maqasid al-Sharia as an evaluative lens.
Methodology – This study employs a qualitative doctrinal approach combined with a comparative legal analysis. Primary materials (statutes, regulations, policy documents, and case law where available) are systematically interpreted and contrasted, and are triangulated with recent high-impact international scholarship on cyber security law, digital constitutionalism, and Islamic legal theory.
Findings – The analysis shows that Indonesia is moving towards cyber resilience through incremental institutional strengthening and the coordination of fragmented sectoral regimes, while Malaysia adopts a more centralized model via dedicated cybersecurity legislation focused on the National Critical Information Infrastructure. These divergent trajectories shape risk allocation, incident reporting and accountability mechanisms. This study identifies a set of functionally equivalent harmonization strategies: baseline obligations, mutual recognition of standards and certification, interoperable incident reporting, and institutional interoperability, and demonstrates how maqasid al-Sharia reframes these as instruments to protect life, intellect, property, dignity, and social order.
Implications – The findings offer concrete guidance for regulators and policymakers in designing cybersecurity frameworks that enhance resilience without legitimizing disproportionate state power in the digital domain and provide a normative benchmark for Muslim-majority jurisdictions.
Originality – This study is among the first to integrate digital constitutionalism, comparative public law, and maqasid al-Sharia into a single analytical framework to assess and harmonize cybersecurity regulations in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Rethinking gharar in digital business subscriptions: A Sharia perspective on automatic renewal practices

2026-01-28T07:23:27+00:00

Purpose – This study aims to evaluate the Shariah compliance of automatic renewal mechanisms in digital subscription business models. It specifically investigates whether these practices align with Islamic legal principles, focusing on the potential presence of gharar (uncertainty) and its impact on consumer protection in the insurance industry.
Methodology – This study employs a qualitative normative legal approach. It analyzes contemporary digital contract practices through the lens of classical Islamic jurisprudence, particularly the concepts of Ridā (mutual consent), Bayān (transparency), and Dafʿ al-Ḍarar (prevention of harm). A comparative analysis is also conducted of existing digital consumer protection regulations.
Findings – The study finds that automatic renewal practices often contain elements of gharar yasir (minor uncertainty) that can escalate into gharar fahish (excessive uncertainty) when transparency is low. The reliance on passive consent and "dark patterns" in interface design often compromises the validity of Ridā. Furthermore, these mechanisms frequently lead to unintended financial charges, which contradict the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah principle of Ḥifẓ al-Māl (the protection of wealth).
Implications – This study suggests that digital service providers should implement "Active Consent" models and clear notification intervals to ensure Shariah compliance. It also provides a framework for Islamic financial regulators to develop specific guidelines for subscription-based Fintech and digital commerce.
Originality – While many studies discuss general e-commerce, this study provides a specialized Shariah critique of the "Subscription Economy" billing cycle, offering a novel integration of algorithmic transparency and Islamic contractual ethics.

Reconceptualizing halal industry governance in the digital economy: A maqasid al-Sharia based legal framework

2026-01-15T01:50:41+00:00

Purpose – This study aims to reconceptualize halal industry governance within the digital economy by developing a maqasid al-Sharia-based legal and policy framework. It positions the objectives of Islamic law, namely the protection of religion, life, intellect, lineage, and wealth, as the normative and analytical foundations for formulating digital halal governance.
Methodology – This research adopts a qualitative approach based on a systematic literature review and conceptual analysis of internationally reputable academic sources addressing maqasid al Sharia, halal industry governance, the digital economy, and enabling technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Findings – The findings demonstrate that maqasid al-Sharia can function simultaneously as an ethical framework and policy instrument for strengthening transparency, accountability, and sustainability in halal industry governance. The integration of Maqasid principles with digital technologies enhances regulatory legitimacy, harmonizes halal standards, and reinforces consumer trust within the global halal ecosystem.
Implications – This study contributes theoretically by extending the discourse on Maqasid-based halal governance in the digital economy. Its policy implications include recommendations for developing adaptive, cross-jurisdictionally harmonized, and sustainability-oriented digital halal regulations.
Originality – This study proposes a novel conceptual model of maqasid al Sharia-based digital halal industry governance that integrates Islamic normative dimensions with modern digital technologies, an area that remains relatively underexplored in contemporary halal and digital economy literature.

Maqasid al-Sharia and the digital data ownership: From al-Shatibi to Jasser Auda

2026-01-20T12:27:40+00:00

Purpose – Contemporary secular data protection issues are structurally inadequate to address digital data ownership. Despite consent-based and privacy-centered models, data subjects often lack meaningful control over economically exploitable data assets, while large platforms relate to asymmetrical informational access. This study responds to this failure by integrating classical and systems-based maqasid al-Sharīa to construct a principled Islamic framework for digital data ownership.
Methodology – This study uses qualitative, doctrinal, and descriptive-analytical techniques based on library-based research. Al-Shatibi’s traditional maqāṣid framework and Jasser Auda's systems-based theory are examples of primary sources in recent academic works on Islamic legal theory. Thematic analysis and conceptual synthesis were used in the analysis, focusing on methodological evolution and continuity within maqasid al-Sharīa rather than comparison.
Findings – This study finds that al-Shatibi’s maqasid paradigm, which emphasizes harm reduction, public welfare, and the preservation of important interests, offers crucial normative underpinnings for digital data ownership. However, it also highlights the structural shortcomings in dealing with the intricacy and systemic characteristics of digital data operations. By adding human dignity, systemic responsibility, and future-focused ethical reasoning, Jasser Auda's systems-based approach improves upon classical maqasid.
Implications – By presenting maqasid al-Sharīa as a dynamic ethical system that can interact with digital governance and data ethics, the suggested integrated maqāṣid framework advances contemporary Islamic legal theory.
Originality – Rather than merely comparing classical and modern maqasid theories, this study reconstructs digital data ownership as an urgent normative-economic problem and advances an integrated Islamic solution that is responsive to contemporary technological power structures.

Digital transformation, intellectual capital, and Sharia compliance in Indonesian Islamic banking

2026-01-28T05:39:36+00:00

Purpose – This study aims to systematically synthesize and evaluate existing empirical evidence on the performance effects of digital transformation and intellectual capital in Indonesian Islamic banking, with particular attention to their complementarity and the role of institutional and regulatory contexts. It also incorporates Islamic law viewpoints by examining how Sharia governance and compliance considerations shape digital economy practices and performance outcomes.
Methodology – Adopting a systematic literature review approach guided by PRISMA, this study reviews peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus database. Studies were screened using explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria and analyzed thematically across four domains: digital transformation pathways to performance and intellectual capital–performance linkages.
Findings – The review finds that digital transformation enhances efficiency, innovation, sustainability, and financial inclusion in Islamic banking. Intellectual capital—human, structural, and relational—emerges as a critical enabling capability that converts digital initiatives into both financial and Sharia-aligned performance outcomes.
Implications – For practitioners and policymakers, the findings highlight the importance of aligning digital strategies with investments in intellectual capital and supportive governance structures. For scholars, this review underscores the need to integrate capability-based and institutional perspectives.
Originality – This study offers one of the first comprehensive, theory-integrated syntheses of digital transformation and intellectual capital in Indonesian Islamic banking, advancing a holistic capability-based framework that explains performance heterogeneity beyond technology adoption alone, while integrating an Islamic law perspective to link Islamic digital economy practices in Sharia banking with socio-economic sustainability, financial inclusion, customer trust, and institutional legitimacy.