Husband to Share, Anyone Interrested?

In the last few weeks, infotainment TV shows proudly announced a very hot rumour about the polygamy of one of Indonesia’s top Islamic preacher, KH Abdullah Gymnastiar or AA Gym. He used to be known as a family man to his (first) wife, Teh Ninih, and their five (or seven?) biological children, also a few of foster children. Then he made a press conference confirming his second marriage to a beautiful (she’s an ex photo model by the way), independent, smart 30 year old widow (so contrast with the depiction of polygamous wives of the Prophet Muhammad (except Aisyah): widows, age more than 60 or at least have reach menopause stage, black, extremely poor, formerly a slave, ill educated, poor, not good looking at all…)

A couple of years ago, I was a little bit confused when AA becomes one of the recipients of the “Polygamy Award” organized by Puspo Wardoyo, owner of the famous chain of roasted chicken restaurant that has seven wife, and very proud of it. AA, and other men (all of them are men!), including of course, our ex vice president HH, get the award for his success in living a polygamous marriage, or have making an effort to support it. Yes, PW said he doing it to campaigning polygamy as an Islamic way of life. By that time, AA refused to be called as an actor of polygamy, but he didn’t prohibit the act either. In a lot of events he used to say that although (he considered) that Islam legalize polygamy, he is not ready to do that because, he always says, he had a very wonderful wife, mother of his many children.

As an immediate response to the present condition, on Tuesday, December 6, SBY invite Muthia Hatta, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Nazarudin Umar from the Department of Religion (also former commissioner of the National Commission on the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to the Presidential palace. The meeting later becomes the headline in all media, because it raise the issue on expanding PP 10 (national regulation concerning marriages and divorces of civil servants, that include the limitation of polygamy) so it can be applied to every citizen. Yes, it already became a national issue.

Then the fireball also reaches me. Last week I involved in a group debate at a national TV station about the issue. My group, calling ourselves the Voice against Polygamy Network (we just come up with the name because we come from different organizations and backgrounds: lawyers, paralegals, NGO activists, housewives, teacher, labor activist) were against Hizbut Tahrir, one of the largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia that proudly support the practice of polygamy. After the TV show, I received some SMSs, some of them support the struggle against polygamy, and some just expressing their opinion, and one friend actually said that she support polygamy and now doing a research to write a book about it. Well, we are still friends instead of the debate, all I can say for her is good luck because I know it is not an easy job, working with verses interpretation differences, reality, cases and human rights of women and children.

Everyone that consider themselves as human right defender will agreed that polygamy was a serious violation of women’s human right. Polygamy represents one of the form subordination and discrimination to woman, which relying on excellence / certain gender superiority to the other sexes. Polygamy legalizes marital infidelity. In reality many polygamy case triggers domestic violence against children and woman, including physical, psychical, economics and sexual violence.

Then, Polygamy became the form of domestic violence that legitimated by the belief system and law in the society. It is an acknowledgment of a gender hierarchy and a sexual privilege of men toward women. This practice is against the principle of equality, anti discrimination and also anti violence in so many existing law instruments. (such as the 1945 Constitution, Human Rights Act, CEDAW, Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women)

Prof. KH. Acep Djajuli once interpret a famous adagio about Islamic marriage "your wife is your clothes and you are your wife’s clothes", which means, first, wife and husband have to guarding t each other is; both, wife and husband have to comprehending each other and also seeing through each other’s like and dislike, and third, to taking care of each other each ignominy.

The history of Islam at the time has managed to limit the polygamous culture of Arabian men that use to have dozens of wives and concubine to just four wives at a time. But the reason to have a polygamous marriage is limited. And, that time polygamy should be done as a means to help and raising the welfare and social status of widows, slaves and orphan girls. The hardest qualification that must be fulfilled by a man that planning to have a polygamous marriage is that he had to be fair to his wives to be. And of course, the term of “fairness” is not only for the material, but also for the psychological well being for the rest of the family including their children. And the Koran has also stated about the term “fair” in An Nisa: 129, that a man cannot act fairly among his wives, although he really tries to. These verse itself actually a negation for the right of a man to practice polygamy.

Too bad that until now, men in our dominant patriarchy exploit the so called right to polygamy and claim that is a ruling of Islam, and more as an Islamic way of life (of course they won’t popularize or even mention the An Nisa:129 verse as it would ruin their argument in instant).

As in Indonesia, polygamy is legalized (with a very discriminative against women limitations) in the 1974 Marriage Act. It is also legalized at the 1991 Islamic Law Compilation. Article 3 ( 1) of the Act No.1 / 1974 affirming: `At its ground in a marriage a man shall only have a wife. A woman shall only have a husband'. However, a man may conduct polygamy if he applied at the Religious Court and get its permit. The application is obliged to contain approval of his wife/wives. He is also obliged to make certain that he can guarantee its wives necessities of life and their children and also he guarantee to be fair to all of his wives and children. To give its permission, judges are obliged to call and hear the wife. But, the discriminative part was that the in approval of previous wife is no longer relevant in cases of: ( i) the wife consider to be unable to fulfill her duty as a wife (this what makes a lot of female migrant workers became the victim of polygamy while they were working abroad), or ( ii) have body handicap or irremediable disease; or ( iii) cannot bear descendant.

But then, due to the procedural hurdles to enter a legal polygamous marriage, most of the cases they just do the second, third and maybe fourth marriage only in religious way (“kawin siri’). These marriages were untouchable by the law, and no legal protection at all for the women, the first or the other wives. But, the first wife may report the husband and his other wife to the police on the crime of adultery or marriage crime (because ‘kawin siri’ is not considered as a legal marriage). But in reality, a very little of these cases succeed, because law enforcement officers not paying enough attention, weak law, hard to find evidence etc. The other problem is, how many wives are there really willing to report their husband to the police (and also risking herself to be a widow and risking her children’s future)? And even worst, a lot of men really have a discreet 2nd, 3rd or 4th and more marriages and his first wife and children have no idea about it.

The struggle against polygamy is still have a long way to go. Lays ahead are the advocacy for the revision of the Marriage Act, the revision of the Islamic Law Compilation, the new national Criminal Code. But the core struggle is to change the mainstream thoughts of men (and women of course) in this patriarchal culture, the ground of its discriminative impact against the human rights of women and children. And to let all women (and also children) know that they have the right to say no to polygamy. (Monday, December 18, 2006)