Suchergebnisse

AbstractWhile religious guidance may be central in choosing a spouse or expectations from marriage, until the nineteenth century, it was the contractual nature of marriage that defined the actual union entered into by husband and wife and according to which they lived together. Most importantly, marriage contracts could and often did include specific conditions agreed upon by the parties to the contract. The modern period will witness a shift toward privileging the religious side of marriage at the cost of the contractual and women's agency would experience a serious shift due to modern personal status laws.

In the tradition of Jama'ah Rifaiyah there is the practice of repeating the marriage contract called Shihhah. This tradition emerged from the understanding of the central figure of the Rifaiyah congregation, Kiai Ahmad Rifai, who categorized some Muslims who supported the Dutch colonial government into the category of wicked believers, including the Penghulu (Chieftain). Penghulu who are under the auspices of the colonial government are considered no longer have a "adil/fair" nature. This has resulted in any marriage process led by the government head being considered invalid, because the chieftain is not a fair believer who is required to lead the marriage process. This tradition lasted until the post-independence period. The purpose of this study is to find out the practice of shihhah from the colonial period until now and what factors are behind it. Field research with a descriptive-analytical approach found that the practice of shihhah among the Rifaiyah congregation experienced a shift. The practice of shihhah is still carried out by some Rifaiyah congregations even though the Indonesian government is no longer a colonial government. Some Rifaiyah congregations still practice shihhah on the grounds of a clash with a religious figure. However, many Rifaiyah congregations no longer practice shihhah.

This article examines diverse practices in the establishment of marriage partnerships in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka,1parts of which were controlled by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Family law was an area in which the attempt to transform local practices was conspicuously present, but not fully achieved. Lawful marriage was linked to conversion to Dutch Protestantism and to inheritance of property. In the authoritative space of the provincial board that heard the matrimonial disputes examined in this article, the Company did not proactively attempt to reform family life, an area where it could not easily dictate terms. It made a significant dent as the requirement for marriage registration was recognised by natives. But the limited reach of the introduced law is evident in the Company's reluctant recognition that its two-step process of reading the banns and subsequent marriage ceremony created confusion and that locals still followed customary practices for forging unions. The VOC faced a normative order in the villages that was characterised by ritual underpinnings. Such local features went unrecognised in official law rules, but their perseverance is testimony to the pluralities in practice in an early colonial encounter in the Indian Ocean world.