<![CDATA[The relationship between customary law and Islamic law in Indonesian Muslim society reflects the dynamics of a pluralistic legal system, in which state law, customary law, and religious law coexist and interact with one another. Rather than operating as two mutually exclusive normative systems, customary law and Islamic law have historically undergone processes of harmonization, acculturation, and, at certain moments, contestation, giving rise to hybrid legal practices in the areas of marriage, inheritance, and dispute resolution. However, previous studies have tended to examine the relationship between the two systems separately and remain largely descriptive and normative, leaving the functional mechanisms that enable these systems to operate side by side, particularly in the area of dispute resolution, insufficiently explained in relation to the discourse of restorative justice. Against this backdrop, this article aims to examine the philosophical foundation of the Minangkabau maxim “adat bersendi syara’, syara’ bersendi Kitabullah” and the fiqh requirements that allow customary practices to be accommodated within Islamic legal reasoning. This study employs a qualitative-doctrinal (normative) legal approach supported by library research. Case illustrations from Minangkabau matrilineal inheritance, Acehnese inheritance practices, and Bugis marriage traditions demonstrate that the two systems function as complementary registers of normative authority. In the field of dispute resolution, the mediating role of customary leaders demonstrates structural similarities with the principle of islah (reconciliation), which constitutes one of the foundations of restorative approaches in Islamic criminal law, thereby creating opportunities for the development of locally grounded dispute-resolution models that are more restorative than punitive. This article argues that a functional rather than hierarchical model of legal pluralism provides the most accurate account of how Indonesian Muslim communities negotiate identity, justice, and religious obligations in their everyday legal lives.]]>
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