Islamising Policy or Decolonising Law? Constitutional Negotiation in Indonesia's Local Sharia Regulations

In post-Reform Indonesia, decentralisation has generated numerous Sharia-inspired local regulations, many of which were initially associated with symbolic, moralistic, and punitive forms of legal formalisation. This article examines a subsequent shift toward more substantive forms of local Islamic legal governance. Using a normative legal method informed by a socio-legal perspective, it analyses halal tourism regulations in West Nusa Tenggara and West Sumatra and child-marriage prevention policies in Gresik and Ponorogo. The concept of ‘beyond formalisation’ is used here to describe a reinterpretation of Islamic legal values through legal pluralism, responsive law, and maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah within local public policy. The analysis shows that these regulations cannot be understood uniformly. Some continue to reproduce coercive or majoritarian tendencies, while others translate Islamic legal principles into instruments of economic development, social protection, and the safeguarding of vulnerable groups. The article argues that such policies are best understood as sites of constitutional negotiation in which local governments and social actors reinterpret Islamic legal norms within Indonesia’s plural legal order. From a postcolonial perspective, this shift illustrates an effort to move beyond the rigid positivisation of fiqh toward contextual forms of legal reasoning that connect Islamic legal values with constitutional rights, public welfare, and local social needs.