Customay Judges in Digital Space: Authority Contestations, Living Fiqh, and Legal Pluralism in Bugis Customary Inheritance Dispute Resolution via WhatsApp Groups

Abstract

The migration of Bugis customary inheritance dispute resolution from physical adat halls to WhatsApp groups marks a substantive transformation in how authority is constituted, performed, and recognized. This article argues that digital platforms function as epistemic participants rather than neutral conduits, reconfiguring the performance of pangngaderreng and the production of living fiqh within socio-technical environments. Utilizing a qualitative design combined with multi-layered digital ethnography, the study analyzes five hundred chat threads from ten Bugis family WhatsApp groups, thirty dispute cases, and in-depth interviews with fifteen pabbicara, ten ustadz, and twenty group participants over a six-month period. Three primary findings emerge. First, WhatsApp operates as a digital court that reproduces pangngaderreng norms through platform logic while compressing traditional deliberation into reaction-driven consensus. Second, living fiqh is produced through collaborative ijtihad and textual negotiation, displacing classical sanad chains of scholarly authority under conditions set by platform affordances. Third, legal pluralism in this digital arena takes the form of a dynamic interlegality where customary, syariah, and state norms negotiate legitimacy through strategic hybridization and algorithmic visibility rather than a fixed hierarchy. The study concludes that Bugis customary authority is no longer territorial but algorithmic and relational, necessitating the formal recognition of digital mediation within the national judicial system to address the shifting textures of contemporary justice.