Women, Islam and Everyday Life

Renegotiating Polygamy in Indonesia

Nina Nurmila

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415468022
• eBook ISBN: 9781134033706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines Islam and women's everyday life, focusing in particular on the highly controversial issue of polygamy. It discusses the competing interpretations of the Qur'anic verses that are at the heart of Muslim controversies over polygamy, with some groups believing that Islam enshrines polygamy as a male right, others seeing it as permitted but discouraged in favour of monogamy, and other groups arguing that Islam implicitly prohibits polygamy. Based on detailed fieldwork conducted in Indonesia, it provides an empirically-based account of women's lived experiences in polygamous marriages, describing the different perceptions of the practice and strategies in dealing with it. It also considers the impact of changing public policy, in particular Indonesia's 1974 Marriage Law which restricted the practice of polygamy. It shows that, in fact, this law has not resulted in widespread adherence, and considers how public policy could be modified to increase its effectiveness in affecting behaviour in everyday life. Overall, the book argues that polygamy has been a source of injustice towards women and children, that this is against Islamic teaching, and that a just Islamic law would need to call for the abolition of polygamy.

1
Introduction

I disagree with polygamy that is practiced these days because it is based only on lust. One example is my husband, who entered into polygamy, even though he is not yet economically capable [of supporting his wife]. … Several months after his second marriage, he had large debts and his children’s tuition was unpaid. With that large debt, I thought that I had to ask my husband to divorce his second wife before our economic position further deteriorated.¹

(Interview with Tuti, 23 February 2004)²

This book explores Muslim women’s perspectives on and experiences with polygamous marriages in Java, Indonesia, during the post-Soeharto period (after 1998). The quote above is the perception of one of my female interviewees about her experience of living in a polygamous marriage. It reflects Tuti’s disapproval of her husband’s second marriage and the resulting economic problems. These affected not only his own well-being but also that of his wives and children. However, Indonesian laws regulating polygamy appear more concerned with meeting men’s interests in having subservient wives and less concerned with women’s interests. Women who are unable to bear children or are sick are particularly vulnerable.

In Indonesia, polygamy is legal, but the law discourages and restricts its practice. The present Marriage Law, which was enacted in 1974, states that a man can take additional wives if his established wife is unable to fulfill her duties as a wife, is unable to bear children, or has an incurable illness. Before taking another wife, he must obtain permission from a Religious Court. This permission can be granted if the husband can demonstrate that he is financially capable of supporting more than one wife and capable of being just to his wives, and if he obtains the consent of the established wife/wives (Department of Information, 1979:10–11).

In practice, it is not easy to know the actual number of incidences of polygamy in Indonesia because of the high prevalence of unregistered marriages. But overall, prior to the enactment of the 1974 Marriage Law, about 5 percent of all marriages were polygamous (Azra, 2003:89; Bowen, 2003:202). Vreede-de Stuers (1960:128) and Geertz (1961:131) reported, respectively, that in 1939 and 1953 the prevalence of polygamy in Java was 2 percent of all marriages. At a glance, this seems to be low, but when we look at the actual number of polygamous marriages it is quite large (163,362 out of 8,230,788 marriages). That is why polygamy has become one of the burning concerns of Indonesian women’s organizations, since their first congress in 1928.

Jones also reported the incidence of polygamy in the Netherland Indies (now Indonesia) in earlier times, which varied from region to region. For instance, the 1920 Population Census showed that 1.5 percent of Javanese husbands were polygamous. The 1930 Census showed that 1.9 percent of Javanese husbands had more than one wife, while the rate of polygamy in the Outer Islands was about double that in Java (4.4 percent). The highest incidence of polygamy in 1930 was in Nusa Tenggara (Sumba 13 percent and Flores 12 percent), where traditional beliefs were more prevalent than Islamic influence. In more Islamized regions, the highest incidence of polygamy was in West Sumatra (9 percent) and then Lampung (5.9 percent) (Jones, 1994:269–70). The practice of polygamy among rulers was an exception to the majority of monogamous marriages. For rulers, having many wives not only fulfilled their sexual desire but also indicated their high status and could be used as a diplomatic weapon (Reid, 1988:151 and Lubis, 2000:217–20). For instance, Sutherland (cited in Jones 1994:270) reported that almost all Javanese Regents in the nineteenth century had more than one wife. The practice of polygamy among aristocratic men seems to continue until the early twentieth century.

Azra suggests that the percentage of polygamous marriages was probably lower after the 1974 Marriage Law, which made polygamy more difficult (2003:89). Indeed, it might be officially lower than before the enactment of the Marriage Law, but the official figures should be accepted with caution owing to many cases of unregistered secret polygamy during the Soeharto period, as Suryakusuma (1996) suggested. In addition, as this book will show, in the post-Soeharto period polygamy has been promoted mainly among Islamists or Islamist political party members.

Despite the widespread and growing occurrence of polygamous households in Indonesia, there is a surprising dearth of detailed scholarship. In two recent studies, Susan Blackburn (2004) and Anita Rahman (2005) both noted the paucity of analysis on Indonesian polygamy.³ Blackburn stated:

In researching this book, I have been struck by the lack of documentation on women’s experience of some of the important issues discussed, notably in relation to polygamy. Considering how crucial this issue has been within the women’s movement and in its relation with the state, it is surprising how little evidence there is of the impact of polygamy on women’s lives and how this changed over time.

(Blackburn, 2004a: 226)

By providing detailed data from an empirical study of 39 households in Bandung, Bogor, Depok and Jakarta, the book fills the gaps in the existing literature on polygamy. In particular it explores polygamy in Islam, which has mainly centred on men’s normative views of polygamy, as the discussion below reveals. This book sheds light on women’s agency within polygamy, countering the existing view of women as passive and helpless victims of male subordination. As pointed out by Moghadam (2003a: 26–7), much feminist scholarship over the past 20 years shows that women are not merely passive recipients of social change, but are active agents of such change. Women and men are ‘makers of history and builders of movements and societies’. Like women in the Middle East and North Africa (Moghadam, 2003a: 27), Indonesian women are also agents and have also been actively involved in social movements.⁴ As will be demonstrated in Chapter 3, since the early twentieth century, Indonesian women have organized themselves and actively resisted various forms of injustice toward women such as child marriage, forced marriage, unilateral divorce and arbitrary polygamy by continually campaigning for marriage law reform (Vreede-de Stuers, 1960; KOWANI, 1978; Blackburn and Bessell, 1997; Martyn, 2005).

As a work of feminist scholarship, this book is not merely a collection of data about polygamy in Indonesia. ‘It is a directly political and discursive practice in that it is purposeful and ideological’ (her emphasis) (Mohanty, 1991:53). This research is also intended as a significant intervention into the mainstream hegemonic interpretation of polygamy as it is written into Indonesian Marriage Law and government regulations. This study aims to be a political praxis that counters and resists the state’s ‘legitimate’ interpretation of polygamy. The results of my research should have important implications for policy makers in relation to possible amendments of the Marriage Law on the issue of polygamy, especially with recent moves to prohibit the practice.

However, while this book is not a study of law per se, nonetheless, I am necessarily concerned with the social construction of law in Indonesia, and with the ways in which men and women interpret laws on an everyday basis. I am not a lawyer, but in order to understand the gap between the written law and the everyday practice of the law in relation to polygamy, I have read a great deal of legal material. I have also researched the historical and political background of marriage laws in Indonesia, focusing particularly on the 1974 Marriage Law and its related government regulations such as PP 10 and Kompilasi Hukum Islam (the Compilation of Muslim Family Law).⁵ My research has delved into the complex world of Islamic law and its interpretations by Muslim scholars, religious leaders, community elders and lawyers. In addition, it has explored the manner in which ordinary people interpret and put into practice the advice these community leaders have provided.

In everyday life, even though codified laws such as the Marriage Law and the Compilation exist, many Indonesian Muslims prefer to follow the classical fiqh. Fiqh, which literally means ‘understanding’, is the result of Muslim scholars’ understandings of the Qur’an and Hadith (prophetic tradition) in law-related issues (ijtihad). It is commonly called Islamic jurisprudence, or Islamic law, and is mainly written by male medieval ulama (religious scholars). Codified Muslim family/personal laws are derived from fiqh works, and modified to reflect the situation of the country at the time of the codification. Thus, they are like a national ijtihad. Many Indonesian literalist Muslims consider the stipulations of the Marriage Law and the Compilation, which are not found in the fiqh works, as ‘secular’⁶ and ‘un-Islamic’.⁷ Therefore, they regard stipulations such as marriage registration and court intervention in cases of divorce and polygamy as unnecessary.

Following Abdullah Saeed’s discussion of Muslims in Australia, I define ‘Islamic law’ as any law which does not contradict one’s fundamental beliefs as a Muslim, and which is based on basic principles common to Islamic law, such as equity, justice and fairness.

There are hundreds of thousands of laws that actually govern our lives, our relationships to others and various institutions in the country. All these become acceptable laws for the purpose of practice, but because these do not seem to be in conflict with one’s beliefs as a Muslim, they are also seen as Islamic. So they’re not actually in contradiction with my core beliefs as a Muslim and I take them as acceptable and Islamic for the purpose of practice. For a Muslim, the principles on which many of these laws are based are Islamic, such as equity, justice, and fairness. For this Muslim, these laws are not burdensome, so-called secular laws, they are Islamic. The Muslim has Islamized them in practice by considering them to be not in conflict with his or her beliefs.

(Saeed, 2002:3)

Saeed’s view on the constituent elements of Islamic law is more inclusive, as it includes even secular laws (such as traffic laws, company law and taxation law) as long as they do not contradict one’s basic Muslim beliefs and principles. Based on this definition, I shall argue that marriage registration and court intervention in cases of divorce and polygamy – as stipulated under Indonesian Marriage Law and the Compilation – are Islamic, because they aim to prevent injustice toward women and to reduce the incidence of divorce and polygamy, which many Indonesian Muslims believe to be discouraged under Islam: this belief derives from a hadith, narrated by Abdullah ibn Umar: ‘The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: Of all the lawful acts the most detestable to Allah is divorce’ (Abu-Dawud, 2007).

My acceptance of Saeed’s inclusive definition of Islamic law also affects my attitudes toward secular concepts such as feminism, which I consider to be in harmony with Islamic principles because it aims to achieve justice and equality.⁸ I see feminism as an awareness of the existing oppression or subordination of women because of their sex and as working to eliminate such oppression or subordination and to achieve equal gender relations between men and women.⁹ I am aware, however, that at a practical level western feminists’ actions may differ from those of Indonesian feminists, because of a different context and different assumptions regarding the sources ...

Table of contents

• Women in Asia Series
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Polygamy in context
• 3 Muslim discourses on polygamy in Indonesia
• 4 Reactions to and negotiations around polygamous marriages
• 5 Polygamous households
• 6 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index