Standardization of Islamic fintech contracts: Legal pluralism, smart contract governance, and the common law challenge

The rapid expansion of Islamic fintech has introduced new possibilities for delivering Sharia-compliant financial services through digital platforms and blockchain-based smart contracts. However, this technological development also raises significant legal challenges concerning Sharia compliance, contractual enforceability, and cross-jurisdictional regulatory consistency. This article examines the legal issues surrounding the standardization of Islamic fintech contracts, focusing on both traditional Islamic financial contracts and their emerging smart contract equivalents. It argues that standardization in Islamic fintech is not merely a technical exercise aimed at improving efficiency and scalability, but a normative legal process that determines how Sharia principles are interpreted and operationalized within digital financial systems. Drawing on comparative insights from jurisdictions such as England, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia, the article demonstrates that common law and hybrid legal systems often prioritize contractual certainty and governing law clauses while struggling to accommodate Sharia as an independent normative framework. The article contends that meaningful standardization of Islamic fintech contracts requires a layered governance approach combining standardized contractual archetypes, Sharia supervisory oversight, technical auditability, and judicial review to ensure both legal enforceability and substantive Sharia compliance.