Modern Platforms for Timeless Principles: Sharia-Based ‘Aurah Norms on TikTok

Abstract

Research on digital Islam examines how Muslim women navigate modesty norms, yet less attention is given to the preachers who produce online moral regulation. This study addresses that gap by analysing how preachers on Tiktok discursively reconstruct ‘aurah and how religious authority is reshaped into a form of informal digital hisbah (moral enforcement). Using the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), the study examined 39 short-form videos from Malaysian and Indonesian preachers, focusing on nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivisation, and intensification/mitigation to reveal how linguistic choices interact with TikTok’s algorithmic environment to construct gendered socio-legal expectations. The findings show that TikTok is not only a medium for preaching but a site of “algorithmic moral regulation,” where preachers portray women as “moral risks” and men as responsible guardians. Argumentation relies on authority and threat-based reasoning, including eschatological quantification that reframes modesty as a communal burden. A key insight is the “paradox of affective authority,” where strict, fear-oriented warnings are softened with pastoral tones to maintain attention and engagement. The study contributes to digital religion scholarship by theorising TikTok as a mechanism of digital hisbah that re-entrenches patriarchal authority and compresses complex jurisprudence into simplified, fear-driven moral governance