Unity Lens

Aldhy Abdullah, Ria Warda Mappile, Subhan Subhan

Marginalization and assimilation policies in Southern Thailand have weakened the transmission of Islamic knowledge and Malay-Muslim identity, creating an urgent need for culturally responsive educational alternatives. This study analyzes the role of Tadika Nadwatul Islammiah Dala—a community-based Islamic kindergarten in Pattani, Southern Thailand—in sustaining religious values, cultural identity, and social cohesion within marginalized Malay-Muslim communities. We employed a qualitative case study design incorporating targeted ethnographic techniques, involving 28 participants (10 students, 6 teachers, 8 parents, and 4 community leaders) selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected over a three-week period (1-20 August 2024) through participant observation (4-6 hours daily), in-depth interviews (45-90 minutes), and document analysis, and analyzed using the Miles and Huberman interactive model. The findings reveal that Tadika plays a multidimensional role as a center for religious education, cultural transmission, identity preservation, and community support. It significantly improves children’s religious literacy, strengthens social solidarity, and provides an affordable educational alternative for low-income families. However, Tadika faces persistent challenges, including limited government support, inadequate facilities, and socio-political pressures affecting Muslim minorities. Despite these constraints, Tadika remains a resilient and strategic institution in preserving Islamic values and Malay cultural identity. In conclusion, Tadika serves not only as an educational space but also as a critical mechanism for cultural resilience and identity formation in marginalized Muslim communities.

Unity Lens

Artharani Shafira Puteri, Yusafrida Rasyidin, Nofrizal Nofrizal

Gender inequality in Muslim societies persists despite normative Islamic principles that emphasize justice and equality, largely due to historically constructed patriarchal interpretations. This study aims to analyze women’s roles in Islam through Leila Ahmed’s feminist epistemology, focusing on how such interpretations were produced and institutionalized. A qualitative library research design was employed, using primary works of Leila Ahmed and relevant secondary literature. Data were analyzed through historical and epistemological approaches, including thematic categorization and conceptual analysis. The findings indicate that women’s marginalization originates from historical Islam rather than normative teachings. The institutionalization of patriarchal norms during the Abbasid period significantly limited women’s participation in intellectual and public spheres. In addition, classical Islamic knowledge production reflects socially situated perspectives that exclude women as epistemological subjects. These findings demonstrate that gender inequality is structurally embedded within interpretative traditions rather than derived from religious doctrine. This study contributes by integrating historical context and feminist epistemology to provide a more comprehensive understanding of gender issues in Islam. Unlike previous descriptive studies, this research highlights the role of power relations in shaping religious knowledge. The results suggest that achieving gender justice requires not only reinterpretation of texts but also reconstruction of epistemological foundations. Future research is recommended to explore empirical applications of feminist epistemology in contemporary Muslim societies. Additionally, the study reinforces the importance of critically revisiting dominant interpretative frameworks and encourages inclusive knowledge production that acknowledges women’s experiences as valid sources of religious understanding within broader Islamic intellectual traditions in contemporary scholarly discourse today.

Unity Lens

Ridho Hidayat, Jamil Jamil

Gender-biased interpretations of nusyuz in Islamic family law have long positioned wives as the primary subjects of marital disobedience, while male neglect of marital obligations remains under-recognized, resulting in weak protection of wives’ rights. This issue is particularly significant in the Indonesian context, where normative Islamic principles of reciprocity are not consistently reflected in legal interpretation and judicial practice. This study aims to examine the concept of male nusyuz and its implications for gender justice within Islamic family law. Using a qualitative juridical-normative and socio-religious approach, the study analyzes 12 normative sources, including Qur’anic verses, Prophetic traditions, classical and contemporary fiqh literature, and Indonesian family law regulations, particularly the Compilation of Islamic Law (KHI). The analysis employs a doctrinal approach guided by a gender-justice framework based on reciprocity (mubādalah). The four categories of male nusyuz—neglect of financial maintenance, emotional abandonment, abusive conduct, and failure of responsible leadership—were derived through thematic classification and doctrinal synthesis of Islamic legal texts. The findings indicate that while Islamic normative sources doctrinally recognize reciprocal marital obligations, their application in legal interpretation and judicial practice tends to emphasize wives’ nusyuz, with male misconduct often addressed through alternative legal categories. This study contributes to Islamic legal scholarship by offering a systematic doctrinal reinterpretation of nusyuz that incorporates male accountability within a unified framework. It also highlights the need to strengthen gender-just interpretations in Indonesian legal practice, particularly in judicial reasoning, to ensure more equitable protection of spouses’ rights.

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Rahmatus Solikha

Gender inequality remains a persistent issue in many Muslim societies, often reinforced by patriarchal interpretations of religious texts and institutional practices that constrain women’s agency. This study examines a particular strand of Islamic feminist thought by analyzing Musdah Mulia’s reinterpretation of tauhid as an ethical-theological framework for gender justice. Using a qualitative descriptive, library-based approach, the study analyzes selected texts, publications, and documented initiatives associated with Mulia through thematic content analysis. The findings indicate that tauhid is articulated as an ethical principle that rejects hierarchical gender relations and emphasizes moral and ontological equality between men and women. Contextual interpretations of Qur’anic passages such as Q.S. al-Aḥzāb: 35 and Q.S. 7:189 are used to challenge gender hierarchy and affirm shared religious responsibility. The analysis further shows that this framework integrates elements of Islamic ethics, liberal feminist theory, and critical pedagogy, resulting in a dual orientation toward institutional reform and cultural-educational transformation. Rather than proposing a universal model, the study situates this approach within the Indonesian context as part of a humanist-liberal current in Islamic feminism. This study contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how tauhid-based interpretation can be analytically linked to feminist theory and social praxis while remaining contextually and methodologically bounded.

Unity Lens

Isnaen Rachmat Al-Hafidz, Nur Hasyim, Akhriyadi Sofian

Digital platforms have become important sites for contemporary feminist activism, particularly in sociocultural contexts where patriarchal norms, moral conservatism, and platform governance shape public discourse. In Indonesia, Instagram has emerged as a contested digital space in which feminist expressions are both enabled and constrained. This study examines how feminist discourse is constructed, sustained, and adapted through the Instagram account @indonesiabutuhfeminis, a grassroots digital feminist community. Grounded in Berger and Luckmann’s theory of the social construction of reality, the study explores feminist activism not merely in terms of visibility or engagement, but as an ongoing process of meaning construction within a structurally challenging digital environment. Using qualitative content analysis of visual and textual posts published between 2021 and 2022, complemented by systematic online observation of interaction patterns and platform practices, the findings show that feminist discourse on the account is maintained through adaptive practices rather than isolated campaigns. These practices include the repeated circulation of accessible visual-textual content, the strategic use of hashtags to foster collective identification, sustained interaction with followers, and the activation of a secondary account following platform disruption. As a single-case qualitative study, the findings are not intended for generalization; however, they provide an in-depth understanding of how grassroots feminist activism navigates digital vulnerability while maintaining ideological continuity. This study contributes to digital feminism scholarship by demonstrating how social media functions as a site where feminist meanings are continuously constructed, negotiated, and stabilized within contested digital spaces in contemporary Indonesia.

Unity Lens