islam, politics and change

182 islam, politics and change

is that I wanted to be unstained (bersih), if you only separate like that you

will not be clean’ (‘Maksudnya kan mau bersih, kalau cuma pisah-pisah

begitu saja kan tidak bersih namanya’). The divorce must be ‘black on

white’ (hitam di atas putih), otherwise ‘it will be difficult to remarry’.

Another woman relates divorce at the Islamic court with custom

(adat-istiadat):

Researcher: Why did you divorce at the Islamic court and not

outside? I ask this question because in a number of areas in

Indonesia it is common (cukup biasa) to divorce [elsewhere,] not

before the Islamic court.

Informant: Do you mean divorce in the village (cerai di kampung

saja)?

Researcher: Yes.

Informant: Because here that is not customary (karena adat-

istiadatnya disini kan ga begitu). Here you have to divorce before

the court. ...

Researcher: Thus in the village there are no people who are willing to

divorce a couple?

Informant: No, they would not dare (Gak mau, takut).

Even if the marriage had an informal status, women prefer an official

divorce in order to obtain a clean status. Bu Karmila had been married

for nine years and two children were born of the marriage. The marriage
had an informal status because the kua refused to provide the couple
with a marriage certificate, since her husband was still registered as

married to someone else. Bu Karmila clarified that her former husband

had indeed been married before, but had been divorced by his first
wife through the Islamic court. According to Bu Karmila, the first wife
did not want to cooperate with the remarriage and kept the divorce

papers to herself. When, after nine years of marriage, Bu Karmila found

out that her husband had been adulterous she wanted to divorce him
formally so that she might obtain official divorce papers and be free to
remarry formally in the future. The Islamic court advised an isbat nikah
procedure, through which the marriage is formally recognised first, after

which the divorce can take place.

It remained unclear why the husband had not received a divorce

certificate before. To go deeper into this problem would be speculation

and beyond the point I want to make: that formal divorces through
the Islamic court seem to be the norm in Bulukumba, and informally
divorced women are stigmatised. Women are very much made aware