Digital Fatwa Regionalism in ASEAN: Platform Governance, Religious Authority, and Cross-Border Moral Circulation

Abstract

Religion has become increasingly entangled with digital communication and regional politics in Southeast Asia. Across ASEAN, moral claims now travel through social media platforms, online sermons, influencer networks, and digitally amplified controversies, making religious authority more visible across borders than in earlier phases of regional interaction. The purpose of this article is to explain how platform-mediated religious authority generates cross-border regional effects without depending on formal legal integration or treaty-based governance. The article applies a qualitative, theory-building design grounded in constructivist regionalism and digital religion scholarship. It uses a comparative case approach focused on Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in order to examine variation in religious authority, regulatory capacity, and governance style across different national settings. Empirical materials are drawn from policy documents, public statements, platformed religious debates, media reports, and secondary academic literature on Islam, governance, and digital publics in Southeast Asia. The analysis is organized around four mechanisms: platformed authority, regulatory convergence, moral panic diffusion, and the translation of moral claims into market and security concerns. Cross-border circulation of fatwas and religious advisory claims contributes to a form of regional ordering in which platform visibility, administrative response, and public controversy shape one another across national boundaries. Digital fatwa regionalism therefore demonstrates that religion can function not only as a source of tension, but also as a medium of legitimacy, policy coordination, and regional problem framing in ASEAN. The article contributes to the study of regionalism by showing how digitally mediated moral authority produces governance effects beyond Eurocentric models centered on formal institutions.