Under the Black Hue: Assessing Bilingual Islamic Short Fiction for Youth Moral Reflection

Young Muslims living in today’s digital culture are subject to complex sociocultural pressures that negatively affect their moral decency (haya’) and ethical foundations (akhlak). They often show psychological rejection against conventional religious teaching (da’wah), thus creating innovative, creative and indirect educational strategies is necessary. This study assesses readers’ acceptance of Under the Black Hue, an 81-page bilingual (English-Malay) e-book collection of four short stories intended as an Islamic edutainment resource. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study created the short narratives around important themes, such as appreciation, interpersonal relationships, and self-reflection. A structured survey was conducted to empirically evaluate reader response. Results from statistical analysis show high pedagogical efficacy where 95.8% of respondents successfully extracted key spiritual concepts, and 100% of respondents reported having a thorough understanding of the characters and story structures. Additionally, 95.8% of respondents preferred multilingual presentation, with 87.5% praising its capacity to communicate unique emotional nuances across languages. Visual design and layout ergonomics strongly influence the respondents to read the entire e-book (93.7%), give peer recommendations (97.9%) and maintained reading engagement (97.9%). The overall findings show that bilingual short stories effectively help youth to connect with modern Islamic teachings by making communication clear in order to inspire deep religious reflection during da’wah.

Language, pedagogical instruction, religious teaching

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