Disrupting From Within: Teungku Inong and The Reconfiguration of Religious Authority in Aceh's Dayah

The participation of women ulama in Aceh has grown alongside the tightening of religious regulations. However, Southeast Asian scholarship on piety and agency rarely unpacks dayah's institutional mechanisms—especially the conversion of ethical capital into institutional recognition through negotiation and strategy within conventional (male-dominated) leadership arenas. To address this gap, drawing on qualitative data (interviews, observation, and forum documentation), this study examines: (i) the formation of piety and credentials among teungku inong; (ii) strategies for negotiating authority across compliance and resistance; and (iii) the conditions that render leadership legitimacy contingent. The findings show the cultivation of piety through a dayah–university trajectory, mastery of turāth texts and sanad networks, ritual discipline, and varied sartorial expressions; and the expansion of authority via the lexicon of musāwah, alternative spaces (beut seumeubeut and protection services), participation in formal bodies, sanad networks, and collaborations with NGOs. Overall, women's religious legitimacy in Aceh is contextual and contingent, emerging at the intersection of piety and institutional recognition, and shifting between transformation and co-optation.