Regulating Interfaith Marriage in Indonesia: A Religious Legal Pluralism Approach to Legal Certainty and Constitutional Justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38035/gijlss.v4i4.1101Keywords:
Interfaith Marriage, Legal Pluralism, Religious Law, Marriage Regulation, Legal CertaintyAbstract
Interfaith marriage remains one of the most controversial issues in Indonesian marriage law due to the unresolved interaction between state law, religious law, and constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. Although various statutes, judicial decisions, and administrative regulations govern marriage, they provide inconsistent legal standards regarding the validity and registration of interfaith marriages, creating a persistent legal gap and legal uncertainty. This study aims to examine the regulation of interfaith marriage through the perspective of religious legal pluralism and to formulate a regulatory model capable of reconciling Indonesia's plural legal order. Using a normative-empirical legal research design, this study analyses legislation, judicial decisions, religious doctrines, and qualitative interviews with six religious leaders representing Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. The findings reveal divergent religious positions, with Islam, Protestantism, and Hinduism generally prohibiting interfaith marriage, Catholicism allowing limited dispensations, and Buddhism and Confucianism adopting more accommodative approaches. Based on these findings, the study proposes a religious legal pluralism model that integrates the authority of religious institutions with state administrative procedures, thereby providing a more coherent mechanism for determining the validity and civil registration of interfaith marriages while balancing legal certainty, constitutional rights, and respect for religious diversity. The empirical findings, however, are limited by the small number of informants and the single-regional scope of the interviews, suggesting the need for broader comparative research. This article contributes to the reform of Indonesian marriage law by offering a constitutionally grounded and institutionally coherent framework for regulating interfaith marriage within Indonesia's multicultural legal system.
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