Enhancing Islamic Law Literacy and Digital Halal Registration Compliance among MSMEs through a Collaborative Community Engagement Program

Abstract

This community service program aimed to enhance Islamic legal literacy and assist digital halal certification registration for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in South Sulawesi. The activity was conducted involving 40 food and beverage business operators from Makassar, Gowa, and Maros through an international collaboration between the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Universitas Muhammadiyah Makassar, Yala Rajabhat University Thailand, and the Center for Halal Studies and Research South Sulawesi. The method utilized a participatory action learning approach combined with direct clinical mentoring, consisting of legal literacy workshops, manual drafting for halal product assurance systems (SJPH), and digital portal registration clinics on the BPJPH SIHALAL system. Program evaluation employed a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results demonstrated a significant increase in average understanding from 32.00% to 85.75%, achieving a normalized gain (N-Gain) score of 0.79 (high gain category). Furthermore, 38 out of 40 business operators (95.0%) successfully finalized their digital registration and secured official document receipt letters (STTD) on-site. The conclusion confirms that integrating Islamic legal education with clinical digital mentoring effectively overcomes literacy limitations and technological barriers faced by small enterprise operators