Algorithmic Islam and the Transformation of Islamic Authority in the Digital Age
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64984/ijcd.3.1.2026.27Keywords:
Digital religious authority, Islamic authority, digital capital, Social Media and Religion, Algorithmic Mediation, Digital Da’wah, religious legitimacyAbstract
The rapid development of digital media ecosystems has significantly changed the composition, production, and scattering of the Islamic religious authority. Traditional power structures that rely on education, lineage, and mastery of classical work are increasingly merging with the algorithmic visibility, platform logic, and performance metrics of the digital age. This article aims to critically examine how Islamic authority is being reshaped in digital environments and the impact of social media platforms on religious legitimacy, interpretive authority, and community identity. The paper identifies the key structural transformations, including the emergence of micro-celebrity preachers, decentralization of judicial authority, monetization of religious information, and sorting the ummah by algorithms, which are based on a qualitative thematic analysis of the recent scholarly publications and selected examples of digital da’wah, distribution of fatwas online, and algorithmic mediation. The results suggest that religious discourse is not merely housed within digital infrastructures; rather, it is shaped and altered by them. This interaction leads to the emergence of new hybrid forms of authority, which arise from the fusion of theological and digital capital. Additionally, the article states that the modern Islamic power is becoming more and more bargained at the crossroads of knowledge, visibility, measure of engagement, and platform regulation, which continues to require the theory of the religious power to be reconstructed in the era of digital mediation.
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