Moral Militarisation in the Implementation of Islamic Law in Public Dress Code Raids
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65586/insani.v1i2.77Keywords:
Militarisation, Moral dress code raids, Moral transformation, Public spaces, Respect for citizens' rightsAbstract
The clothing raids in the implementation of Islamic law reveal a paradox where morality, which should liberate through ethical awareness, is instead militarised into a disciplinary mechanism that subjugates the body and produces compliance in public spaces. This study aims to comprehensively analyse the phenomenon of moral militarisation in the implementation of Islamic law through dress code raids in public spaces, highlighting the mechanisms of control, normative legitimacy, and its impact on social power relations. The study uses a qualitative approach with a critical-interpretative case study design, chosen because it allows for an in-depth exploration of the practice of moral militarisation as a layered, contextual social phenomenon laden with power relations. The results state that clothing raids are not merely a practice of al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-l-nahy ʿan al-munkar (enjoining what is good and forbidding what is evil). Still, a form of moral militarisation intertwined with religious populism, image economics, and the compliance industry is often more effective at instilling fear than at promoting public welfare. The critical implication is that a state that makes clothing a moral enemy risks exchanging substantive justice for superficial rituals of control, normalising stigmatisation, and obscuring structural problems that are far more damaging to human dignity. Therefore, the agenda in the future is not merely to reorganise raid procedures, but to shift sharia from a policing project to a social ethics project oriented towards maqāṣid, respect for citizens' rights, and moral transformation born of awareness, not fear.
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