Rethinking Religious Authority: Fatwa Committee, Scientific Expertise, and Politics of Halal Certification in Indonesia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21580/ahkam.2026.36.1.29823Keywords:
Fatwa Committee, halal fatwās, official muftī, religious authority, scientific fatwasAbstract
This article unveils how scientists, alongside ulama, have come to gain religious authority. Following the enactment of the Halal Product Assurance Law in 2014, the state has assumed a central role in structuring halal discourse, displacing civil society as its primary driver. One of the clearest manifestations of this state-driven shift is the establishment of the Fatwa Committee under the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2023. Through a qualitative approach and a religious authority framework, this study advances three main arguments. First, the institutional arrangement of the Fatwa Committee has enabled scientists to possess an equal degree of religious authority alongside the ulama, effectively positioning scientists as academic muftīs. As a state-affiliated body, the Fatwa Committee transforms its members into official religious authorities, reinforcing the state-centric nature of Indonesia’s halal movement despite its non-Islamic constitutional foundation. Second, halal determination has shifted away from being exclusively a domain of traditional Islamic legal reasoning, no longer requiring extensive fiqh-based deliberation. Third, halal certification cannot be fully understood as a conventional fatwa within classical Islamic legal doctrine; rather, it represents a novel hybrid form of religious ruling. This phenomenon challenges efforts to preserve flexibility and democracy in Islamic legal discourse.
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