REFRAMING IʿTIBĀR AL-MAʾĀL AS AN ETHICAL FRAMEWORK FOR RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

Khilāf fiqhi) is an inherent feature of Islamic legal tradition, reflecting methodological diversity and interpretive plurality within fiqh. However, in the contemporary digital environment, such disagreement has increasingly migrated from scholarly and institutional settings into social media platforms, where it often generates public confusion, polarisation, and contestation of religious authority. This shift positions khilāf fiqhi not merely as a legal issue, but as a complex problem of religious communication in the digital public sphere. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine how juristic disagreement operates on social media and to propose Iʿtibār al-Maʾāl as an ethical and impact-based framework for managing religious disagreement online. Employing a qualitative research design, the study utilises document analysis of classical fiqh texts, works of uṣūl al-fiqh, contemporary fatwas, institutional guidelines, and selected social media discourses related to contentious fiqh issues in Malaysia. The findings reveal that unmanaged digital communication of khilāf fiqhi intensifies polarisation and undermines public trust in religious institutions. The study demonstrates that Iʿtibār al-Maʾāl can be operationalised as a content-filtering logic, a framework for ethical religious communication, and a social impact indicator. It concludes that integrating this theory into digital religious discourse offers a systematic and socially responsive approach to managing juristic disagreement in Malaysia’s contemporary media landscape