RECONFIGURING RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY THROUGH LIVING ISLAM: CONTESTATION AND NEGOTIATION IN CONTEMPORARY INDONESIA

Abstract

The growing prominence of living Islam has shifted scholarly attention from Islam as a normative textual tradition toward the ways in which religious teachings are interpreted, negotiated, and embodied in everyday social practices. Yet, less attention has been given to how these practices are shaped by competing claims to religious authority, particularly amid the coexistence of local Islamic traditions, transnational religious movements, and digitally mediated forms of religious leadership in Indonesia. This article examines the mutually constitutive relationship between living Islam and religious authority in contemporary Indonesia. Drawing on a qualitative-reflective review of empirical studies on Indonesian Muslim communities published between 2005 and 2025, the study analyzes the mechanisms through which religious authority is constructed, contested, and reconfigured across local, transnational, institutional, and digital contexts. The findings identify three interconnected dynamics. First, contestation between local Islamic traditions and transnational Salafi and tarbiyah orientations reshapes the legitimacy of ritual and communal practices, including debates over bid'ah, grave visitation, and Maulid Nabi celebrations. Second, the expansion of television and social media has reconfigured religious authority by enabling new preachers to accumulate legitimacy through media visibility, communicative competence, and digital popularity alongside, rather than entirely outside, traditional forms of scholarly authority. Third, intra-Muslim disputes over Prophetic genealogy (nasab), particularly claims associated with the Ba'Alwi lineage, demonstrate how genealogical, scholarly, social, and symbolic resources are mobilized to sustain competing claims to religious legitimacy. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that religious authority and living Islam are mutually constitutive: transformations in the sources and structures of authority generate changes in everyday religious practices, while changing practices simultaneously create new sites of authority contestation. The study contributes to scholarship on contemporary Islam by showing how religious authority in Indonesia is not simply transferred from traditional to modern actors but continuously reconfigured through interactions among textual traditions, social networks, institutional legitimacy, cultural capital, and digital media.