Interreligious Marriage in Indonesia

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Interreligious Marriage in Indonesia
Ariane Utomo The University of Melbourne [email protected]
Peter McDonald The University of Melbourne [email protected]
Abstract
Indonesia – home to the world’s largest Muslim population – is an ethnically diverse archipelago with sizeable non-Muslim communities. There is a dearth of demographic study on how religions shape patterns of marriage partnerships in Indonesia. We use full enumeration data from the 2010 Indonesian Population Census to examine the incidence, regional variation, pairing patterns, and socio-demographic correlates of interreligious marriage (irm). We derived a subset of over 47 million co-resident heads of household and their spouses from the 2010 Census. About 228,778 couples (0.5%) were enumerated as having different faiths at the time of the Census. Rates of irm are higher in ethnically diverse provinces. Such findings are likely to underestimate the prevalence of interreligious marriage due to existing regulations and norms that effectively discourage irm, and the associated practice of pre-marital conversions. Our multivariate analysis focused on three provinces with the highest rates of irm: Jakarta, North Sumatra, and West Kalimantan. In Jakarta and North Sumatra, the likelihood of irm is higher among non-Muslims and among those at the higher end of the educa- tion spectrum. In these provinces, the likelihood of irm is lower among younger birth cohorts, supporting speculation about stronger institutional barriers against irm over time. This is the first study attempting to derive national and regional estimates of patterns of irm in Indonesia. Given the increasing polemics related to irm and the In- donesian Marriage Law, setting out this research is an important initial step for further study of this issue.
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Keywords
interreligious marriage – assortative mating – Muslim – Islam – demography of religion – Indonesia
Despite being home to the world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia has sizeable non-Muslim communities. The 2010 Population Census indicated that about 13% of the Indonesian population were non-Muslims (bps - Statistics Indonesia 2011a). While Islam is the majority religion in most regions of Indonesia, there are notable pockets where it is not. These include the Hindu majority province of Bali, the Catholic majority province of East Nusa Tengga- ra, the Christian majority provinces of North Sulawesi, West Papua, and Papua; and other areas where there are similar proportions of Muslims and Catholics populations like that of Maluku (bps - Statistics Indonesia 2011b).
As is the case in many Muslim-majority countries, religion plays a central role in regulating the universality of marriage and in shaping a persistent norm of religious endogamy in the vast Indonesian archipelago. Socio-religious dis- tance and ethnic prejudices challenge intimate relationships leading to inter- religious marriage (irm) in Indonesia. It is widely reported that the majority of religiously intermarried couples are also in inter-ethnic unions (Nurcholish and Baso 2010). A recent study using the 2010 Population Census finds that ethnic endogamy is still the prevailing norm for marriage, given that 89% co-resident married couples in Indonesia were found to be in ethnic endog- amy (Utomo and McDonald 2016). Given the relatively small proportions of ethnic intermarriage, it is reasonable to assume that the incidence of irm is relatively small in Indonesia.
Existing laws and regulations concerning marriage effectively discourage interreligious marriage in Indonesia. Article 2(1) of the 1974 Marriage Act states “a marriage is legitimate, if it has [been] performed according to the laws of the respective religions and beliefs of the parties concerned”. Reemphasizing this point, Government Regulation Number 9, 1975 on marriage states that “the marriage ceremony shall be performed according to the laws of the respective religion or faith” (Article 10/2), and “shall be performed before the official mar- riage registrar” (Article 10/3). The indirect impact of the provisional enact- ment of this legislation is that interreligious marriage is strongly discouraged by most official religions in Indonesia (see Jones, et al. 2009; Connolly 2009).
Debates around the role of religion and the state in regulating who should marry whom have been gaining traction in recent years. Indonesian couples in interfaith relationships, regardless of their religions, usually face strong opposition from their families, religious leaders and institutions, society, and
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state officials (Baso and Nurcholish 2010; Aini et al. 2017). While there are no legal sanctions for interreligious marriage, the difficulty in registering such marriages have profound legal implications. For example, without a marriage certificate, a couple cannot register the birth of their child and consequently without a birth certificate the child cannot be enrolled in school. In June 2015, the Indonesian Constitutional Court rejected a petition for a judicial review of the 1974 Marriage Law where plaintiffs argued that the current interpretation of the law violates the rights of interfaith couples to get married.
On the one hand, it is reasonable to assume that civil society’s rising inter- ests around the polemics of irm are indicative of forces of change brought by modernity and globalisation. Western theories on assortative mating propose that religious, racial, ethnic and kinship endogamy declines with development and the processes associated with it (Kalmijn 1998; Rosenfeld 2008). Education expansion, extended schooling, increasing geographical mobility, and the declining influence of parents and extended families in deciding whom one should marry are bound to encourage inter-group social interactions, roman- tic relationships, and ultimately, marriage. But, given rising concerns over ethno-religious sentiments and conflicts across the nation over the last de- cade, should we expect this hypothesized relationship between development, modernization and religious endogamy to also hold in Indonesia?
Despite their importance in providing insights into the nature of social stratification in Indonesia, statistics on the prevalence and the patterns of interreligious marriage are largely absent. Existing studies of irm are dominat- ed by research that is predominantly concentrated on normative, especially religious and legal concerns (Thomas 2009; Prasetyo 2007). One exception is a pioneering study that is engaged in researching the prevalence of irm in the special province of Yogyakarta, on the island of Java (Aini 2008).
In this paper, we examine the interplay between religion and prevailing patterns of who marries whom in Indonesia using the relatively limited data provided by the Indonesian Population Census 2010. We examine the national and regional rates, patterns and socio-demographic correlates of irm using the full enumeration data from the 2010 Indonesian Population Census. We argue that a demographic inquiry into interreligious marriage, or the lack thereof, offers novel insights into the nature of social boundaries and stratification in this ethnically diverse archipelago.
Challenges in Estimating the Prevalence of irm in Indonesia
To date, there are no official statistics on irm. The absence of nationally repre- sentative, demographic data on irm data is attributed to a group of interrelated
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1 Although Islamic law punishes apostasy with death penalty, no former Muslims have ever been executed in modern Indonesian history. Furthermore, Muslims who had converted to other religions are able to enjoy their individual lives freely either in terms of legal, social, and political affairs.
factors. First, the aforementioned legal construction of marriage within Indo- nesian Marriage Law means that it is very difficult to register an interreligious marriage. Under the existing law, Indonesian nationals and foreigners may get married in Indonesia provided they hold one of Indonesia’s official religions. Marriage may be authorised by religious ministers, the Civil Registry Office (Kantor Catatan Sipil) or the Sub-District Office of Religious Affairs (Kantor Urusan Agama – kua). The latter administers marriages between Muslims. In spite of polemics, a majority of Indonesian scholars (ulama) argue for the pro- hibition of irm. Following the Indonesian Ulama Council’s fatwa prohibiting irm, officials of the Sub-District Office of Religious Affairs are not allowed to register an Islamic marriage that involves a non-Muslim (Patricktts 2010).
Until recently, the Civil Registry Office, which by law is exclusively autho- rised to register non-Islamic marriages, had always refused to register irm. Marriage statistics documented by the Civil Registry Office only record a small percentage of irm. Typically included in this small percentage of recorded irm are those initially registered overseas or the few marriages registered by couples who were brave enough to challenge the bureaucratic complexities, the social taboo, and oppositions to do so from parents, extended families, and religious leaders.
Second, because the legal process of irm is complicated, religious conver- sion is quite likely to occur prior to a marital contract. There is barely any legal option for conducting irm in Indonesia, especially for Muslims. Instead, to obtain a marriage certificate, it is common for one party of the would-be inter- faith couple to convert to his/her partner’s religion to meet the requirements of the law and for him/her to revert to his/her original religion after the mar- riage has been legally performed and registered. Between 1991 and 2008, one Gereja Kristen Jawa (Javanese Christian Church) in the city of Salatiga in Cen- tral Java gained 75% of its new members due to religious conversion prior to marriage. However, during the same period 72% of those who left the church had reverted to Islam following their marriage (Seo 2013:90). The reconversion practice has flourished since there was no harsh punishment executed to those who have reconverted.1 This may provide an explanation as to why the rate of irm registered in public offices was extremely low or even zero for many
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years. Hadi (1996) found that 65% of irm amongst Catholic adherents cele- brated at church were not registered at the Civil Registry Office of Yogyakarta. These  limitations of administrative data are less relevant to census data be- cause time has elapsed to enable partners to revert to the religion they held prior to the conversion that was required for registration. At least in theory, in contrast to administrative data, the Census allows couples in mixed marriages to be enumerated under their respective beliefs.
Third, available data on the prevalence of irm tends to be compartmental- ised or issued exclusively by a certain religious institution, such as the Catholic Archdiocese of Jakarta, or based on a non-representative sample. In Jakarta, the capital, there were 3,447 interreligious married couples (or 138 cases annu- ally on average) who registered marriages at the Civil Registry Office between 1975 and 1999 (Maningkam 2000). Aini’s (2008) study utilising samples from the Indonesian Census Data of 1980, 1990 and 2000 found some critical points. In 1980, at least 1.5% of married couples in Yogyakarta were interreligious (Aini 2008: 20–21). That number increased to 1.8% in 1990. Among non-Muslims, the rate was much higher, around 5% in 1980, 1990, and 2000. Other studies found extremely high rates of interreligious unions among Catholics. Wiludjeng (1991), using data from the Catholic Archdiocese of Jakarta, 1981–1989, found that one-third of Catholic marriages were interreligious. The figure increased slightly to 34.6% in 2007 (Rukiyanto and Ramadhani, 2009: 149). Tjahaja (2000: 100) found that irms made up 43% of unions involving Chinese Catholics in Jakarta in a particular year. Most recently, Sri Wahyuni (2015: 7–8), using data from the Central Jakarta Civil Registry Office of overseas marriages, found that irm constituted 8.9% of marriages in May 2011, and 12.5% in the following month. In the absence of legal and social obstructions to irm, higher rates of interreligious marriage among non-Muslims are expected. Given their large numbers, the statistical likelihood of endogamy among Muslims would be high even when we assume that individuals in the marriage market have no preference over the religion of their prospective partner.
Lastly, estimates of the rates of irm depend on the number of categories used to define religions. Existing studies on irm in Western settings use dif- ferent numbers of categories to estimate the prevalence of irm. In studying irm in Australia, Heard et al. (2009), for instance, divides Protestant into: An- glican, Uniting Church, Presbyterian and Reformed, Eastern Orthodox, Bap- tist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, and other Christians. Meanwhile, Hayes (1991) only divides Protestant into: Anglican, Liberal and other Protestant. Because of the discrepancy of religion categorisation, their research shows significant differences in the prevalence of irm in Australia
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The 2010 Indonesian Population Census records seven categories of reli- gion: Islam, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhism, Confucianism and others.2 Thus, the Census cannot provide statistics that capture theological canonical (denominational) discrepancy within a major religion. For example, there are many Protestant denominations in Indonesia including: Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Adventists, Calvinists, Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so on. In addition, there are also ethnic and region-specific al- liances within the churches, for example, the North Sulawesi Christian Church (Gereja Masehi Injili Minahasa – gmim), the Batak (North Sumatra) Protes- tant Church (Gereja Huria Kristen Batak Protestant – hkbp), the Javanese Christian Church (Gereja Kristen Jawa – gkj). Furthermore, the Census cat- egory, “others” subsumes all local beliefs such as Kejawen and other religions including Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, and Baha’i. The category, Islam, also does not distinguish between divisions within Islam such as Sunni and Shia. The majority of Indonesian Muslims are Sunnis, and Shia Muslims are among per- secuted minorities in Indonesia (Makin 2017; Marshall 2018).
In this manner, any analysis to estimate patterns of interreligious marriage at the national level are thus limited by the way religions are defined and cat- egorised by the Indonesian state. Such categories are subject to change over time and have profound statistical implications. A case in point is the addition of Confucianism as an official religious category in the 2010 Population Census. Confucianism was de-recognised as an official religion in 1979 and in the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses, its followers were enumerated as either Buddhists or Christians (see Pausacker 2007). When compared to other state administrative processes, the Population Census appears to be more liberal, offering an option for Indonesians to be enumerated under the category of “others”. In practice, most Indonesians still do not have the choice to not have a religion. For some, religion is merely a matter of having a formal identity. This point is indicated 2
2 It should be noted that the categorization of religion applied by the 2010 Indonesian Popula- tion Census separates Catholic and Protestant although they are both a part of Christianity. Protestantism and Catholicism have been officially treated as distinct religions in Indonesia for several reasons. First, the history of the presence of the two religions coming to Indonesia was also through different projects. Second, the top organization of the two religions at the national level are also different, namely, the Communion of the Church of Indonesia for Protestants and the Conference of Indonesian Guardians for Catholics. Third, state regula- tions formally separate the two religions in formal bureaucracy, such as the separation of the Directorate Generals of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in charge of serving the interests of the two religions and their adherents, and separates the two religions in official state docu- ments, including in the population census. Thus, Protestant-Catholics marriages are treated as interfaith marriages.
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by the fair numbers of religious conversion amongst Indonesians that were done for a pragmatic reason, including to fulfil an administrative condition of marriage (Seo 2013: 85). In recent years, there has been considerable de- bate whether religion should remain a mandatory field in the national identity card, and whether followers of any non-recognised religions must somehow choose from one of the recognised options. In 2017, the Constitutional Court decreed indigenous religions to be officially acknowledged by the state, en- abling it to be listed as one’s religion in his/her national identity card, marriage certificate, and family registration card – which are key documents that enable access to government services, education, jobs, and travels.3 The complexity associated with religious identity in the everyday life of Indonesians and the changing identities owing to the shifts in official categories, pose a challenge in comparing the national trend of irm across time, let alone in deriving a reli- able estimate at any given point in time.
Current Study
Bearing the above limitations in mind, we use full enumeration data from the 2010 Indonesian Population Census to examine the incidence, rates and correlates of interreligious marriage (irm). In this paper, we define irm as a marital union in which the husband and wife who were enumerated as either the head of the household or the spouse, were living in one household and proclaimed they embraced different faiths at the time of the data collection for the 2010 Indonesian Population Census. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first study to derive national and regional estimates of patterns of irm in the country. As outlined in the previous section, we are fully aware of the challenges associated with deriving national estimates of irm. However, given the increasing polemics related to irm and the Marriage Law in Indone- sia, setting out this research is an important initial step for further inquiries in this field.
With Indonesia’s ethnic heterogeneity, its political trajectory as a young democracy, and its standing as a secular Muslim-majority nation in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is a prime candidate to test the applicability of theories on religious assortative mating outside of Western contexts. Our hypotheses are as follows:
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H1: irm rates would be higher in more ethnically diverse regions
There is wealth of literature supporting the notion that in Indonesia religion is coterminous with ethnicity (see Goebel 2015). We expect that irm would be correlated with corresponding measures in interethnic marriage, and they would both be higher in urban areas, and in more ethnically diverse provinces in Indonesia.
H2: Muslims have lower odds of being in irm
Although other religions disfavour irm (Seamon 2011: 50–55), Islam harshly discourages interreligious marriage for men (Friedmann 2003: 190–193; Anshor and Sinaga, eds. 2004) and it is forbidden for women. In 1980, the Indonesia Ulama Council issued a fatwa declaring a marriage between a Muslim and non-Muslim as unlawful (Number 4/munas vii/mui/8/2005). Furthermore, we hypothesise that due to their relatively large numbers in marriage markets, Muslims have the lowest probability of being in an interreligious marriage. Even when a Muslim has no specific preference to marry another Muslim, the chances of meeting a potential spouse who happens to be Muslim would be much larger than meeting a non-Muslim.
H3: The likelihood of being enumerated as being in an irm is higher for a man/ woman who lives in an urban area, is from a younger age cohort, and who has relatively higher levels of education
The modernization hypothesis suggests that development and its associated processes, such as expanded years spent in formal schooling, the relative ab- sence of cultural constraints in urban areas, increased geographic mobility, and the reduction in parental/kin control in determining whom one should marry, would predict that the rate of irm would tend to be higher in the more educated, urbanised and younger age cohorts.
However, the 1974 Marriage Act operates in contravention of these hypoth- eses. There is considerable scholarly agreement that the 1974 Marriage Law has made it more difficult for interfaith couples to get married than before its promulgation but there is a dearth of empirical evidence to support these claims. Measurement for a cross-section of married men and women of dif- ferent age cohorts is one way to assess whether rates of irm are lower post 1974. However, in addition, recent studies have argued that following the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime and the ensuing political reforms in 1998, con- servative forces are making their mark in Indonesia. Much has been written about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and militancy globally and within
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Indonesia (Rumadi 2015; Hasan 2013). With studies indicating a marked in- crease in the…