POLYGAMY AND HARMONIOUS FAMILIES: INDONESIAN DEBATES ON GENDER AND MARRIAGE

Nelly van Doorn-Harder

Introduction

During the past twenty years, we have witnessed the rise of vigorous Islamist discourses in the public and political sphere all over Southeast Asia and ongoing attempts to replace what was considered to be moderate expressions of Islam with more radical, Middle Eastern-oriented modes of being Muslim. Jemaah Islamiyyah members have fanned out over Thailand, Islamic Party of (pas) tries to reinstate Islamic law in Malaysia, while after the fall of the Suharto regime (1966–1998) which suppressed extremist expressions of Islam, a host of groups emerged that advocate the national application of shari"a laws. Since the time of the nation’s independence, Indonesian Parliaments have consistently rejected formalization of shari"a law. Yet, while suppressing all forms of radical Islam, the Suharto government passed several laws supporting Muslim demands: the marriage law (1974), and the laws regulating religious endowments (1977) national education (1989), and the Islamic religious courts (1989) all testify to a desire to live according to Islamic injunctions (Feener 2007:107). When it became clear that there was not enough political and popular sup- port to enforce national application of shari"a law, several Islamist-oriented groups and political parties lobbied for the introduction of Qur"an-based laws at the local level. As part of their strategy to make Indonesians accept their agenda, Islamist groups started national campaigns aiming for popu- lar acceptance of the practice of polygamy (technically polygyny•). Islamist political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (pks, the ) used to recommend their mem- bers to marry more than one wife, while a ‘Polygamy Award’ was bestowed on individuals who publicly tout the practice’s bene ts (Nurmila 2009:66–70). The practice is still promoted on multiple levels, especially targeting teen and adolescent girls via youth literature, movies, and other popular media. Although many Indonesians do not approve of polygamous marriages, these 56 nelly van doorn-harder campaigns and the growing obsession with women’s bodies and social roles do afect public opinion. In her study on the practice of polygamy in , Nina Nurmila (2009:147) observed that these campaigns impact Muslim women in everyday life and potentially threaten all Muslim marriages since they bestow a degree of religious legitimacy on the practice. While these trends are equally worrisome to moderate Muslims and groups advocating the protection of women’s rights, they are most upsetting for the members of #Aisyiyah and Nasyiat ul-#Aisyiyah (na), the women’s branches associated with Indonesia’s second largest Muslim organization, . Established in 1912 with the aim of reviving and reform- ing Indonesian Islam, political and puritanical trends have inuenced its ideology during its long existence. Especially young, male Muhammadiyah members have joined the newly-founded Islamist parties while concur- rently holding on to their Muhammadiyah membership.1 The push towards polygamy especially challenges the Harmonious Family Programme devel- oped by #Aisyiyah, which advocates the nuclear family model. This chapter discusses some of the challenges these Islamist discourses create for #Aisyiyah women in de ning the ideologies concerning women’s religious position and rights as laid out in The Keluarga Sakinah, or Harmo- nious Family Programme. Although the programme aimed at guiding the entire family, it became particularly a tool to transmit the reformist views on gender and woman’s position within marriage. These views, which now seem contested by Islamist opinions, were shaped over the course of several decades and have inuenced signi cant parts of the Indonesian Muslim population. This battle to clean up the morals of Indonesians is not new and is reminiscent of the actions undertaken by men and women members of the Muhammadiyah organization ever since it was set up in 1912. They waged wars against women with bobbed hair, men and women dancing together, Western movies, and other practices they considered vices. Much of their eforts involved the discourse about gender and sexuality. In their view, their organizations could only succeed by allowing women to participate in the societal and religious project, which resulted in the creation of the branch for women, #Aisyiyah, founded in 1917. Muhammadiyah men led the discussions about how to create a reformist identity, #Aisyiyah women discussed the new

1 For example, see the  ndings of the research by the LibForAll Foundation, co-founded by (1940–2009), summarized in: ‘The enemy within; Islamic extremists and their dreams of a new caliphate’, www.libforall.org/media/news-stories/expose/JakartaGlobe _The-Enemy-Within.pdf.