Focus and scope

Focus

The Indonesian Journal of Islamic Law (IJIL) is a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the socio-legal and theory-driven study of Islamic law as a lived legal practice, with a particular emphasis on ijtihād-based legal reform and Global South perspectives.

IJIL examines how Islamic law operates, evolves, and is contested within social institutions, legal systems, and structures of authority, especially in Southeast Asia and the wider Global South. The journal approaches Islamic law not merely as a doctrinal or normative system, but as a dynamic legal framework shaped by social change, political governance, historical legacies, technological developments, and ethical negotiation.

Through interdisciplinary and methodologically rigorous inquiry, IJIL bridges classical Islamic legal thought (fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh) with contemporary legal challenges, foregrounding socio-legal analysis, institutional dynamics, and contextual reasoning. Distinctively, the journal positions the Global South not as a peripheral case study, but as an epistemic vantage point for rethinking Islamic law beyond Eurocentric, state-centric, or purely textualist paradigms.

IJIL seeks to publish research that generates analytical, theoretical, and empirically substantiated contributions to global debates on Islamic law, legal reform, and legal pluralism, primarily addressing scholars of socio-legal studies, comparative law, and Islamic legal theory, while remaining relevant to legal practitioners and policy-orientated audiences.

Scope

IJIL welcomes original research articles that demonstrate clear theoretical contribution, methodological rigour, and sustained analytical argumentation within the study of Islamic law as a social and legal phenomenon. The journal prioritises socio-legal, qualitative, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches, particularly research grounded in empirical inquiry and contextual legal analysis.

Methodologically, IJIL values research based on qualitative fieldwork, case-law analysis, institutional and policy studies, historical-legal inquiry, and critical discourse analysis, as well as rigorous doctrinal analysis that is analytically framed and contextually situated.

Core Scope Areas
IJIL especially encourages submissions within the following interconnected clusters:
1. Islamic Law and Socio-Legal Transformation
Studies examining the interaction between Islamic law, social change, legal pluralism, institutional reform, and lived legal practices across Muslim societies.

2. Judicial Institutions, Governance, and Legal Authority
Analyses of Islamic courts, procedural justice, state regulation, constitutional debates, fatwa institutions, and the politics of Islamic legal authority, including comparative and transnational perspectives.

3. Family Law, Gender, and Social Justice
Socio-legal and comparative studies of marriage, divorce, inheritance, child protection, and gender justice, analysed through legal, institutional, and maqāṣid-based frameworks.

4. Islamic Legal Thought, Uṣūl al-Fiqh, and Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah
Reform-orientated and critical engagements with classical and contemporary Islamic legal theory, particularly where legal reasoning is connected to social context, ethical objectives, and institutional practice.

5. Global South, Postcolonial, and Decolonial Approaches to Islamic Law
Research addressing colonial legacies, legal modernity, epistemic authority, and alternative trajectories of Islamic legal reform emerging from Global South contexts.

6. Digital Society, Technology, and Contemporary Fatwa Practices
Socio-legal analyses of Islamic law in relation to digital governance, online fatwas, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies, with attention to their implications for legal authority, regulation, and ijtihād-based reasoning.

7. Islamic Law, Public Ethics, and Economic Governance
Legal and institutional analyses of zakat, waqf, philanthropy, and Islamic economic governance insofar as they raise questions of legal authority, regulation, and public ethics, rather than technical or financial analysis.

Out of Scope
IJIL does not consider submissions that are:
1. Purely descriptive or doctrinal without analytical or theoretical engagement;
2. Exclusively theological, devotional, or exegetical without legal or socio-legal relevance;
3. Focused primarily on technical Islamic finance or business studies without a clear legal-institutional dimension;
4. Detached from social, institutional, or comparative contexts.

Grounds for Desk Rejection
In addition to scope considerations—addressed under the Out of Scope criteria above—the Indonesian Journal of Islamic Law (IJIL) conducts an initial editorial screening prior to external peer review. Submissions may be desk-rejected when they demonstrate one or more of the following:
1. Weak theoretical positioning, including the absence of a clear conceptual framework, inadequate engagement with contemporary scholarly debates, or failure to articulate the manuscript’s contribution to the field of Islamic law and society.
2. Insufficient methodological rigour, such as unclear research design, inadequate or unreliable data, unsupported claims, or lack of transparency regarding sources and analytical procedures.
3. Primarily descriptive manuscripts that do not advance sustained analytical, comparative, historical, or socio-legal arguments beyond summary or reportage.
4. Lack of originality or scholarly contribution, including limited novelty in research questions, empirical findings, or theoretical development.
5. Ethical or data-integrity concerns, including plagiarism, inadequate disclosure of research-ethics approval where applicable, questionable data practices, or failure to comply with recognised publication-ethics standards.

Where a submission demonstrates substantive potential but requires strengthening in theoretical framing or methodology, the editorial team may invite authors to revise the manuscript prior to external peer review. Desk-rejection decisions are made by the editorial team and, whenever possible, are accompanied by brief explanatory feedback to assist authors in improving or redirecting their work to more appropriate venues.