Ijtihād Qaḍāʾī under Bureaucratic Governance: Judicial Practice in the Religious Court of Sungai Penuh and Padang Panjang, Indonesia

In the context of an increasingly standardized and bureaucratized modern judiciary, judges of Indonesia Religious Court occupy a complex position, as the judicial roles require adherence to state law while simultaneously exercising ijtihād within the Islamic legal tradition. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze how ijtihād qaḍāʾī is practiced by Religious Court judges and how judicial standardization shapes the patterns of legal reasoning. A qualitative socio-legal approach was used to evaluate judicial practice in two first-instance Religious Court in Indonesia, based on interviews, observations, and analysis of twelve divorce decisions issued in 2023. The results showed that ijtihād qaḍāʾī remains present in judicial decisions but tends to be repetitive and standardized. This was reflected in relatively uniform argumentative patterns, the dominance of formal normative references, jurisprudence, and specific qawa’id fiqhiyah, while methodological engagement with fiqh and hadith remained limited. In conclusion, judicial standardization and bureaucratization do not eliminate ijtihād qaḍāʾī but transform it into a constrained and proceduralized mode of legal reasoning. Theoretically, this study reconceptualizes ijtihād qaḍāʾī in contemporary religious court as a form of constrained normative legitimation, shaped by the logics of bureaucratic rationality and legal formalism.