<![CDATA[This study places Islamic law within Indonesia's local political culture as a field of struggle over meaning that not only reflects the religious aspirations of the community, but also reveals how sharia continues to be negotiated, contested, and even politicised within local democratic power relations that are laden with symbols, identities, and struggles for legitimacy. The aim is to explain how Islamic law can function as a source of political legitimacy, an instrument of public policy, and an arena for identity contestation in local communities. This study uses a qualitative approach with a cross-regional comparative case study design, given the complexity of the phenomena under study, which cannot be reduced to simple causal relationships. The results indicate that Islamic law in contemporary Indonesian local political culture is not merely a normative system applied. Still, rather a field of struggle for meaning that is continuously reproduced in the tug-of-war among the legitimacy of power, collective identity, and the demands of pluralistic democracy. Sharia is often mobilised as a powerful moral symbol, but therein lies the paradox because when Islamic law is reduced to an electoral instrument and moralistic regulation, it risks losing its transformative ethical power as a substantive social justice project. The issue is not whether Islamic law exists in the public sphere, but rather who controls its interpretation, for what interests it serves, and to what extent it can transcend symbolic politics toward an inclusive maqāṣid al-sharīʿah.]]>
