Progressive Da’wah and Contextual Hadith Hermeneutics: Religious and Social Transformations in Central Java, Indonesia

The tension between textual scripturalism and the insistence on secularisation in modernity often obscures the transformative capacity of prophetic texts in contemporary social dynamics. Socio-religious studies have been trapped in a dichotomy between isolated textual-normative ushul fiqh and reductionist da'wah studies without a solid empirical hermeneutic foundation. This article analyses how progressive da'wah internalises hadith values and how this shifts religious understanding among people in Central Java. Using multi-site phenomenological and ethnographic designs across six socio-cultural loci involving 47 key informants, this study unravels the dialectic between normative authority, cultural agency, and digital mediation. The results show that religious transformation does not occur through linear doctrinal transmission but through the Hadith-Based Social Transformation (TSBH) model, which combines Islamic boarding school networks, accommodation of Javanese local wisdom, and hybridisation of cyber authorities. This study's recommendations affirm the importance of updating the epistemology of da'wah, grounded in maqasid sharia, as a substantive analytical framework for global Islamic moderation.