Reflection on Indonesia’s Interfaith Marriage Debate

-
NEWS ITEM: Indonesia’s Constitutional Court recently rejected a request for a judicial review of Article 2 of the 1974 Marriage Law, which effectively forbids interfaith marriage.
I lived in Indonesia for several years during the 1980s, and have travelled back regularly to the country since that time. The period of the 1980s was characterised by comparatively relaxed relations between the faiths. Overt expressions of faith were not so pronounced as they are today. At the time few Muslim women in professional or academic positions wore Muslim head-covering. Conversions between the faiths, especially from Islam to Christianity and vice versa, were in evidence and did not attract much comment. Moreover, I witnessed a number of interfaith marriages among colleagues and in the broader community. At the time, interfaith marriage seemed to be almost a non-issue.
Today the religious scene in Indonesia is very different. In offices, and in the street, the jilbab headcovering for Muslim women has become far more visible than in the 1980s. While conversions from other faiths to Islam are taking place, conversions away from Islam are far more controversial and, where they occur, tend to be kept very low-key. Interfaith marriage has become a highly contested topic, as seen from the events leading up to the recent decision by the Indonesian Constitutional Court.
What has happened to cause such dramatic changes over the last thirty years? A key contextual factor is the worldwide Islamist resurgence that has been in evidence since the 1970s. This resurgence has been characterised by an intra-Muslim struggle to shape the direction of the faith in diverse Muslim-majority locations.
Indonesia has not been immune from the pressures and polemics associated with Islamist resurgence. The Indonesian Islamic community is far from monolithic: it includes radicals, traditionalists, modernists, neo-modernists and a host of other groupings according to such commonly quoted labels. Islamist resurgence has nurtured a more narrow brand of Islamic scriptural literalism that has empowered conservative voices across the Muslim world, including Indonesia.
Within this context of Islamist resurgence, observers should not mistake events such as the recent interfaith marriage debate in Indonesia as a conflict between Islam and other faiths. On the contrary, it is more a case of a tussle between competing Muslim voices, with other faiths caught up in the backwash.
The self-styled guardian of Muslim tradition, the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI), staked its claim to represent the Islamic scholarly mainstream by affirming that Muslims should marry Muslims, not others. The Muhammadiyah, originally a Muslim modernist movement from whom a more inclusivist approach might have been hoped, felt pressured to argue a similar line in order to avoid being tarred with a liberal brush in an age where Islamic scriptural literalism has considerable momentum.
On the other side of the debate are found Human Rights groups, heavily staffed by Muslims, and genuinely liberal Muslim organisations such as the Paramadina Foundation who usually speak out in challenging the literalists. However, on the occasion of the interfaith marriage debate in particular, Paramadina chose to remain silent because of threats from radicals in the past.
The contentious Article 2 of the 1974 Marriage Law has been around for a long time. The fact that it is creating more problems in 2015 than in 1985 shows that the problem is not necessarily in the detail of the Article but rather in today’s context, where inclusivist, open-minded Muslims are struggling in the face of the conservative Islamist lobby that is pursuing a more narrow interpretation of Islam.
Published in Christian-Muslim News Digest Issue 3(25) 2015

Popular posts from this blog

Australia: Conversations about Islamophobia

-
In Australia, conversations about Islamophobia are expanding as the Muslim minority community grows. As in the UK, the term “Islamophobia” is often used as a device to silence critics of Islam. In the following interview, I was asked a series of questions about Islamophobia by a university student newspaper that is researching the topic for the interest of its readers. 1. What is Islamophobia? Islamophobia is usually understood to refer to a fear of Islam and Muslims that is irrational. 2. Where and when did it originate? The term “Islamophobia” has its origins in a report entitled “Islamophobia: A Challenge for us all”, that was produced by the Runnymede Trust and published in the UK in late 1997. The report was commissioned by the British government and was officially launched in the British Parliament. As for the origins of Islamophobia itself, rather than simply the origins of the term, such fear of Islam dates back many centuries, probably originally to the years fol...
Read more

The Marrakesh Declaration avoids hard questions

-
The Marrakesh Declaration , ignored by the mainstream media, has been acclaimed as a new dawn by some commentators: as promising an era of tolerance and pluralistic harmony in the Muslim-majority regions, where religious minorities have suffered so much for so long. With so much bad news coming from the Muslim world, new voices of hope are bound to receive a warm welcome. Between 25–27 January, around 300 dignitaries gathered in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh under the auspices of King Mohammed VI of Morocco. This event represented the culmination of four years of planning, led by Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah of Abu Dhabi, President of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. The conference title was ‘The Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities: Legal Framework and a Call to Action’. As the name suggests, its specific goal was to address the discrimination and persecution experienced by religious minorities living under Islamic major...
Read more

Too Happy Together

-
The Australian city of Melbourne and its new Convention Centre played host last December to the Parliament of the World’s Religions (PWR), arguably the world’s pre-eminent interfaith event. The PWR was birthed in Chicago in 1893 but remained in a state of limbo for a century until being revived in 1993, with subsequent meetings held in 1999, 2004, and, most recently, December 3–9, 2009. The full text of this article was published in "Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity" 23/2 (March/April 2010), pp47-48
Read more