Again: Polygamy!

Jkt-Post (April 23, 2000)

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The argument that defends the practice of polygamy, however, is
age-old and almost unchallenged: it is allowed by Islam, the
religion practiced by 90 percent of the nation. The practice, to a
certain degree, is not prohibited by the government.

But how can a religion that boasts of freeing the oppressed from
their societal shackles endorse this sort of injustice?

It doesn't, some Muslims now argue. They say identifying polygamy
with Islam is a misperception.

Musdah Mulia, a chief expert researcher at the Ministry of
Religious Affairs, says Islamic teachings are monogamous in
nature.

"It has been widely misperceived that Islam teaches polygamy, when
in fact polygamy is something that had been widely practiced in
Arabic society for thousands of years before Islam came along,"
Musdah says.

"What the Prophet Muhammad did at the time was restrict the number
of wives a man can have from unlimited to as many as four."

Musdah says there is only one verse on polygamy in the Koran, and
this verse during the Prophet Muhammad's life shocked Arab men,
many of whom had hundreds of wives at the time. So radical was the
change that some tribal leaders decided not to convert to Islam
because they just couldn't see being married to only four wives.

Legislator Aisyah Hamid Baidlowi says that before Islam, women had
the lowest status in middle-eastern society. They were saleable
commodities to please men's sexual urges and were part of an
inheritance. When a man died, his son could inherit his wife.

"Islam acknowledges that men have bigger sexual appetites than
women, and thus only restricts the number instead of prohibits
it," says Aisyah, who headed the Nahdlatul Ulama Muslimat, the
women's body of the country's largest Muslim organization, from
1995 until earlier this year.

Muslim scholar Komaruddin Hidayat says polygamy was allowed in the
context of helping widows and orphans of war casualties in the
days of the Prophet, a time which was rife with tribal and civil
wars.

"The interpretation of the verse has betrayed its spirit. The
spirit was about freeing people from oppression, but it became
something about domination over women," says Komaruddin, who
chairs the Paramadina Foundation.

The Koran cites that in a polygamous relationship, the man must
treat all of his wives fairly. Fairness here covers material
goods, love and sexual relations. But this, Aisyah says, is almost
impossible, for a normal human being anyway.

Nevertheless the men always claim that they treat their women
fairly, something Komaruddin deems improper: "The victim or the
women should be the one to say whether she is being treated
fairly."

"What it boils down to is that men who have more than one wife are
most certainly big liars who use the Koran's teachings to their
benefit," Aisyah says.

Such is why most polygamous marriages are either illegitimate or
unregistered. The Association of Indonesian Women for Justice (LBH
APIK) handles 400 cases of mistreatment of or discrimination
against women every year. About a fourth of these cases revolves
around extramarital relationships or polygamy, and in both cases,
one of the women involved is always deceived.

"Most men usually marry another woman without their wife's
consent," LBH APIK's coordinator for legal services Asni Friyanti
Damanik says.

According to the 1974 marriage law, a man must obtain the consent
of his first wife and the court before he marries another woman.
The law allows polygamy only under the conditions that the first
wife cannot perform her duties as a wife, is handicapped or is
terminally ill, or cannot bear a child.

Often the man obtains an identity card illegally by slightly
changing his full name and by stating he is single to make the
second wedding possible, Asni said.

Since permits from the legal wife and the court are hard to
obtain, many men resort to marriage that is legitimized only by a
Muslim cleric with the presence of two witnesses and is not
recognized by the state.

Government regulation No. 10, 1983 also requires civil servants
and government officials to have the consent from the wife and his
superior before practicing polygamy. Failure to do so results in
the loss of the job. Both laws, however, fail to deter men from
practicing polygamy.

"I don't deny that polygamy exists in Islam, but it has been
misunderstood. There needs to be reinterpretation on this issue,"
Musdah said.

One theory is that the Prophet's practice of polygamy was part of
missionary work.

Musdah said the Prophet was married to his first wife Khadijah,
who was 15 years older than he, for 28 years. After her death, and
in the last five years of his life during which he was building a
Muslim society in Medinah and surrounding areas, he wedded 11
women, most of whom were older and widows of war casualties.

"The Prophet needed solidarity support from the tribal groups and
an effective way to do this is through marriage," she said.

"This wasn't a normal time, it was the time of religious
proselytization."