Digitizing the Fatwas of Perlis: Efforts toward a Digital Reference Framework in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Fatwas serve as a crucial instrument in guiding the Muslim community toward a sound understanding and practice of Islamic law, particularly in addressing complex contemporary issues. Historically, the compilation of fatwas has been an important mechanism to facilitate scholarly reference and public access, whether reflecting specific schools of thought or individual scholarly opinions. In Perlis, the Fatwa Committee, established under the Administration of Islamic Law Enactment 1964, has produced a series of responsive fatwas grounded in valid ijtihad and informed by the Fiqh of the Early Three Generations and Comparative Fiqh, without being confined to a single madhhab. Despite this progressive approach, challenges persist in terms of documentation, fragmented storage, and the lack of efficient retrieval systems. With the advancement of information technology, digital compilation has become essential to ensure accessible, accurate, and user-friendly fatwa references. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) further enhances this initiative through intelligent databases capable of keyword-based search, semantic analysis, and automated generation of responses derived from authentic sources. This study underscores the significance of digital fatwa compilation in strengthening the role of fatwas as authoritative references while preserving the Islamic intellectual tradition in a form that aligns with the demands of the digital and AI era.

Perlis State Fatwas; Fatwa Committee

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