Indonesia’s top court issues circular against interfaith marriage

It contradicts a 1986 Supreme Court ruling that states interfaith marriages are legal by way of a court order

The top court in Indonesia has come out with a circular requesting courts not to grant a nod to interfaith marriages contradictory to its 1986 ruling which makes interfaith marriages legal in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian nation.

In the July 17 circular, Muhammad Syarifuddin, chairman of the Supreme Court, emphasized the need to establish guidelines to “provide certainty and unity in the application of law in adjudicating applications for the registration of marriages between people of different religions and beliefs.”

The Supreme Court stressed that “a valid marriage is a marriage that is carried out according to the laws of each religion and belief” in accordance with the 1974 Marriage Law.

The circular contradicts a 1986 Supreme Court ruling that states interfaith marriages are legal in Indonesia by way of a court order. The order later became the jurisprudence for judges in deciding similar cases.

This order was banked on by religious institutions, including the Catholic Church, to conduct interfaith marriage ceremonies.

The new circular came after Muslim groups protested against several court decisions that recently granted a nod to marriages between Muslim and Christian couples.

Father Yohanes Aristanto Heri Setiawan of the Missionaries of the Holy Family (MSF), executive secretary of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference Family Commission, said that he was not ready to comment on this circular.

“We are still discussing the response to the circular letter,” he told UCA News on July 20.

Ahmad Nurcholish, a Muslim cleric and program director for the Indonesia Conference on Religion and Peace, said the circular was “an extraordinary setback for the Supreme Court” because it contradicted the 1986 ruling which actually provided a way out for interfaith couples.

“I am disappointed and surprised,” said Nurcholish, who is also a counselor for interfaith couples. He claims to have helped 1,655 interfaith couples marry since 2005.

With the circular, it is possible that interfaith couples will marry abroad only to re-register later in Indonesia, he told UCA News.

“They may also be forced to choose a religion, even if temporarily, just to have their marriage legalized,” he said.

FULL ARTICLE FROM UCA NEWS

Interfaith Relationships Are Becoming Common. Do They Work?

Research reveals the challenges of partnering with someone of a different faith.

KEY POINTS

• The number of interfaith couples is increasing: 20 percent of Gen Xers have interfaith parents, compared to 27 percent of Millennials.
• Interfaith couples report poorer psychological health and experience pressure from their parents to marry someone of a similar faith.
• Involvement in, and importance of, religion markedly declines amongst children raised by interfaith parents.

Interfaith relationships are increasingly common. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 27 percent of Millennials were raised by parents with two different religious backgrounds. This is a marked increase from 20 percent of Gen Xers, 19 percent of Baby Boomers, and 13 percent of the Silent Generation who were raised by parents with two different religious backgrounds.

Today, 25 percent of U.S. marriages involve couples of different religions. Such that, 15 percent of marriages involve one partner who is religious and one who is unaffiliated, such as atheist or agnostic. And approximately 9 percent of marriages involve partners of differing religions, such as one Protestant partner and one Catholic partner.

Because more people are choosing interfaith relationships than ever before, couples may be asking if and how they can work. Every couple’s relationship is unique and the variables which affect their long-term success are complex. Luckily, research in psychology reveals some of the unique challenges that interfaith couples might face.

Challenges for Interfaith Relationships

Both relationships and religion tend to be good for your health. Several studies, for instance, reveal people who are married, rather than single, tend to live longer and experience greater physical and psychological health. In fact, patients who had undergone a coronary artery bypass graft were 2.5 times more likely to still be alive 15 years after their surgery if they were married, rather than single.

FULL ARTICLE FROM PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

Muslims in interfaith bonds are proliferating. Imams willing to marry them are not.

(RNS) — When Faiqa Cheema and Jeff Beale were planning their September 2021 wedding, it was important to Cheema that it include elements of the traditional ceremony of her Muslim faith, while also being meaningful for her husband, who was raised Baptist.

The couple’s path to their dream interfaith wedding turned out to be more complicated than they expected. While such unions are increasingly common, Muslim clergy have long frowned on marrying outside Islam, and Cheema and Beale struggled to find an imam who would officiate, much less adapt the Islamic ceremony, known as a nikah, to recognize Beale.

Many imams refused to marry them, Cheema said, because their bond is “against Islamic teaching and was a sin.” Beale was told to consider converting to Islam. “It’s not something that I wanted for him,” Cheema said.

Their search only came to an end when Cheema ran into the Instagram profile of Imam Imaad Sayeed. The founder of The London Nikah, a 10-year-old marriage agency that is now based in New Jersey, Sayeed has officiated some 250 Muslim interfaith weddings in the past five years, marrying couples from around the world.

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Sayeed’s busy schedule, he said, is the result of being one of the few imams willing to conform the nikah to demographic reality.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 79% of U.S. Muslims who are married or living with a partner are with someone of the same religion. That leaves 21%, presumably, in interfaith relationships.

The rules about intermarriage favor men, according to Imam Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, head of the Islamic Law program at Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts school in Berkeley, California. Ali said the Quran is clear that men are allowed to marry non-Muslim women as long as their brides are “People of the Book” — Christians or Jews, both of whom recognize Abraham as their spiritual forefather, as Muslims do.

FULL ARTICLE FROM RELIGION NEWS SERVICE

Mutual respect is key: Interfaith couples on celebrating differences

Annie Johnny and Satyabrata Rai have been married for five years now. The couple first met on Facebook, in 2009. After dating for a couple of years, when they announced the relationship to their respective families, they were unhappy initially. “Not only because of religious differences but also regional — I am Christian from Kerala, brought up in Delhi, and my husband belongs to a Nepali tribe, and is from Darjeeling. Of course, the major problem both the families had was ‘What will people say?’,” Annie, 34, tells indianexpress.com.

There were fights and arguments, but the couple did everything they could to convince their parents. The families finally met each other. “They could see that the relationship was good; the respective families liked each other and so, thankfully, for us, it did not lead to much of a problem.” Annie and Satyabrata

In 2015, Annie and Satyabrata tied the knot in a Christian as well as a Hindu wedding ceremony without converting to either religion. While religion has “not been a big thing” for the two, the years of togetherness have made the couple more accepting of each other. “If one is getting into an interfaith relationship, there needs to be a lot of respect for each other. More than religion, it is about a sense of familiarity you feel with the culture you grow up in. And then you may not be able to see the negative or positive aspects of it in totality, and when your partner is able to highlight those, it actually helps in a better understanding,” says Annie.

FULL ARTICLE FROM INDIAN EXPRESS

India: Interfaith couples suffer amid a growing religious divide

A jewelry advertisement in India showing a Hindu woman married into a Muslim family led to a fierce backlash from right-wing groups. But what is it like for a real interfaith couple amid rising intolerance?

Sadaf has not had a proper conversation with her father for about three years now. He just wouldn’t talk to her. That is the price she had to pay for choosing to marry a non-Muslim. The New Delhi-based lawyer still visits her parents’ home in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, in the hope that her father will eventually come around and accept her Hindu husband.  

Interfaith marriages are often contentious in Indian society, especially when it involves a Hindu and a Muslim. This was recently seen when a jewelry advertisement featuring an interfaith couple sparked an outrage so intense that the brand, owned by one of the largest conglomerates in India, withdrew the ad.

The jewelry brand said in a statement that its decision to take down the ad was made “keeping in mind the hurt sentiments and the well-being of our employees, partners, and store staff.”

The controversy — not the first of its kind — once again brought into question the tolerance and acceptability of interfaith marriages in a country where religious tensions have been on the rise in recent years.

FULL ARTICLE FROM DW.COM (GERMANY)

In violence-hit Burkina Faso, love wins for interfaith couples

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso – It happened more than 20 years ago, but Inoussa Bouda remembers it as if it happened yesterday.

Waiting at a bus station on his way to his grandparents, he saw a beautiful woman cross the road.

“I was thinking, ‘I don’t know which bus she’s taking, but even if she’s going to the other side of the country, I don’t care – I’m taking the bus with her.'”

Bouda was delighted to find out that the woman was taking the same route as him. The two started talking and the conversation sparked a relationship. Nine years after first meeting on September 29, 1998, in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, they got married.

“At the beginning, our families were against the marriage, but when they realised how much we loved each other they gave up,” Bouda said, smiling.

The 45-year-old entrepreneur, a Muslim, and his wife Alida, a Christian, are an interfaith couple, which according to Burkina Faso’s census, make up approximately 10.4 percent of all married couples in the country. Their three children all have a Christian and a Muslim first name and attend both mosque and church with their parents.

“I see the girls getting up on Sundays and getting ready to go to church, but our boy is still sleeping,” Alida Bouda says, sitting by her husband.

“When his father goes to the mosque he always gets ready on time. It makes me think he’s going to be a Muslim.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM AL JAZEERA 

Interfaith marriages still a rarity in the Muslim world

Despite belonging to different religions, a Lebanese couple has tied the knot and shared their elaborate wedding video online. It sends a strong message celebrating their shared “humanist values and mutual respect.”

    

Wedding bells mixed in with traditional Arabic vocal music, a bride striding across a catwalk to meet her husband-to-be — Lebanese Instagram model Serena Mamlouk and her groom, Anthony Aour, staged their wedding like a fashion show. Their slick five-minute online video, shot from various angles, features elaborate lighting, female dancers, and a crowd on either side of the catwalk.

The stylishly produced wedding video makes a political as well as cultural statement, because Mamlouk is Muslim and Aour is Christian. Interfaith marriages like theirs are still a rarity in Lebanon and the rest of the Muslim world today. Which is why the couple first had a civil marriage in Cyprus, as they would have been unable to tie the knot in Lebanon, where marriages fall under religious law.

Their spectacular wedding video was celebrated by many on social media. One YouTube viewer wrote that it blurs the lines between religions, which is to be welcomed as we are all just humans. Another wished the couple a great future, and a third god’s blessing.

 

FULL ARTICLE FROM DW.COM

Mixed-faith marriage as a way of life in Muslim-majority Dubai

Unusually for a couple in Dubai, theirs is a mixed-faith marriage, with Mina – born a Catholic – choosing not to follow standard practice by converting to Islam when they tied the knot.

She is excited to be on the waiting list for the mass that Pope Francis is expected to hold on Feb 5, during the first ever papal visit to the Arabian Peninsula.

If she gets a ticket, Ali has promised to take over the child-care duties for their 14-month-old twin boys to make it easier for her to attend.

“It takes time to understand that every ritual and every habit is personal,” he told Reuters. “So adapting to each other’s rituals is really about giving the other person space to do what they need to do.”

Living in a Muslim-majority country, Ali has faced pressure for Mina to convert. “A lot of people ask so when is she going to be Muslim. It’s one of those things like, so when are you going to come over to our house.”

But he is mindful that even the Prophet Mohammad failed to convert his uncle, so “this is something that I cannot force onto somebody.”

 

He and Mina started off as business partners when they founded Dubomedy, a Dubai-based arts and comedy school, in 2008.

She remembers their wedding seven years ago as a fond occasion on which both their cultures came together.

“His family came out with the (ululation), Khaleeji (Gulf) music, and my family came out with the O Sole Mio, (Luciano) Pavarotti, you know we had a singer singing Arabic songs and an Italian song,” Mina said.

The couple also celebrate Christmas and fast together for Ramadan.

FULL ARTICLE FROM BD NEWS (BANGLADESH)

What happens when you fall in love across the religious divide?

by Reza Aslan

People assume that, because we are of different faiths, we must have major problems in our relationship. In fact, it has strengthened our bond.

When we – a Muslim and a Christian – fell in love, we didn’t think much about the differences in our religions. (People falling in love usually don’t think much, full stop.)

We figured what we did share – similar values, similar worldviews, and a similarly strong faith in God – was enough. We crossed our fingers and hoped we would be able to work out how to do life together as it came at us: step by step, conversation by conversation, decision by decision. Eight years, three kids, and one beautiful marriage later, that strategy seems to be working.

We are not alone. Interfaith relationships – as well as the pairing of a secular and a religious partner – are on the rise. But despite being the new normal in some parts of the world, the idea still makes some people very uncomfortable.

We often get questions from people who assume there must be major problems – ones unique to interfaith couples. What happens when one person’s religion conflicts with the other’s? Aren’t there irreconcilable differences that come from each of our religious backgrounds? Doesn’t being in an interfaith relationship necessarily weaken our individual religious beliefs? How do we deal with disagreeing friends and family members? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we raise our kids?

No doubt there are some unique challenges to interfaith relationships. But some problems are unavoidable when two people – of any background – come together. On the other hand, there are some advantages in interfaith relationships. There are studies that show that interfaith couples are better at communicating with one another than same-faith couples. In particular, they are better at communicating effectively and coming to an agreement about important issues. Perhaps this is because interfaith couples recognise from the start that they will have to negotiate their religious differences, and so they quickly learn how to carry this skill into other aspects of the relationship.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE GUARDIAN (UK)

Tunisian women free to marry non-Muslims

Tunisia has overturned a law that banned women from marrying non-Muslims.

A spokeswoman for President Beji Caid Essebsi made the announcement and congratulated women on gaining “the freedom to choose one’s spouse”.

Until now, a non-Muslim man who wished to marry a Tunisian Muslim woman had to convert to Islam and submit a certificate of his conversion as proof.

Tunisia, which is 99% Muslim, is viewed as one of the most progressive Arab countries in terms of women’s rights.

The new law comes after President Essebsi pushed for the lifting of the marriage restriction decree that was put in place in 1973.

He said in a speech last month, during celebrations of the National Women’s day, that the marriage law was “an obstacle to the freedom of choice of the spouse”.

The restriction was also seen as violating Tunisia’s constitution which was adopted in 2014 in the wake of the Arab Spring revolution.

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Human rights groups in Tunisia had also campaigned for the law’s abolition.

The order comes into force immediately and couples are free to register their marriages at government offices.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE BBC