Mbak Mia, di bawah ini ada pendapat dari Mbak Marina Mahatir tentang
situasi di Malaysia. Kalau artikel ini saya ingat secara spontan.
Salam,
ayeye
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2006/3/10/lifefocus/13565323sec=lifefocus
No cheer for Muslim women
By MARINA MAHATHIR
In 1948, one of humankind's most despicable ideas, apartheid, was made
into law in South Africa where racial discrimination was
institutionalised. Race laws touched every aspect of social life,
including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites, and
the sanctioning of white-only jobs. Although there were 19 million
blacks and only 4.5 million whites in South Africa, the majority
population were forced to be second-class citizens in their homeland,
banished to reserves and needing passports to travel outside them,
even within their own country. It was only in 1990 that apartheid
began to crumble and South Africans of all colours were finally free
to live as equals in every way.
With the end of that racist system, people may be forgiven for
thinking that apartheid does not exist anymore. While few countries
practise any formal systems of discrimination, nevertheless you can
find many forms of discrimination everywhere. In many cases, it is
women who are discriminated against. In our country, there is an
insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that
between Muslim and non-Muslim women.
We are unique in that we actively legally discriminate against women
who are arguably the majority in this country, Muslim women.
Non-Muslim Malaysian women have benefited from more progressive laws
over the years while the opposite has happened for Muslim women.
For instance, since the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976,
polygamy among non-Muslims was banned. Previously men could have as
many wives as they wanted under customary laws. Men's ability to
unilaterally pronounce divorce on their wives was abolished and, in
its place, divorce happens by mutual consent or upon petition by
either spouse in an equal process where the grounds are intolerable
adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion of not less than two
years, and living separately for not less than two years. Compare that
to the lot of Muslim women abandoned but not divorced by their husbands.
Other progressive reforms in the civil family law in the late 1990s
were amendments to the Guardianship Act and the Distribution Act. The
Guardianship of Infants Act 1961 was amended to provide for equal
guardianship for both father and mother, rather than the previous
provision where only the father was the primary guardian of the
children. In contrast, the Islamic Family Law still provides for the
father as the sole primary guardian of his children although the
mother is now allowed to sign certain forms for her children under an
administrative directive.
The Distribution Act 1958 was also amended to provide for equal
inheritance for widows and widowers, and also granted children the
right to inherit from their mothers as well as from their fathers.
Under the newly proposed amendments to the Islamic Family Law, the use
of gender-neutral language on the issue of matrimonial property is
discriminatory on Muslim women when other provisions in the IFL are
not gender-neutral. Muslim men may still contract polygamous
marriages, may unilaterally divorce their wives for the most trivial
of reasons and are entitled to double shares of inheritance.
These differences between the lot of Muslim women and non-Muslim women
beg the question: do we have two categories of citizenship in
Malaysia, whereby most female citizens have less rights than others?
As non-Muslim women catch up with women in the rest of the world,
Muslim women here are only going backwards. We should also note that
only in Malaysia are Muslim women regressing; in every other Muslim
country in the world, women have been gaining rights, not losing them.
--- In wanita-muslimah@yahoogroups.com, Mia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Minggu lalu sekilas saya baca di Jkt Post artikel ttg diskriminasi
modern di Malaysia. Untuk sebagian perempuan (non muslim) berlaku
hukum poligami yang terlarang, cerai dan hukum warisan yang berlaku
umum. Sedangkan pada sebagian perempuan yang lain (muslim), boleh
dipoligami dan diceraikan begitu saja oleh suami, sering tanpa
alasan, dan ketentuan hak waris ala SI.
Menurut penulis, kok di negaranya jadi berlaku undang-undang
diskriminatif seperti begitu di antara perempuan. Silakan kalau ada
yang bisa posting artikel tsb.
SAlam
Mia
--- In wanita-muslimah@yahoogroups.com, Ari Condro masarcon@
wrote:
1. Tertulis dalam paragraf tulisan di bawah ini : UU RI Nomor
1 Tahun 1974 tentang Perkawinan membolehkan poligami
dengan syarat atas izin istri pertama.
a. Berapa banyak orang yang minta ijin dulu ?
b. Dan bagaimana kalau tidak diberi ijin oleh istrinya ?
2. Tunisia dan Turki sudah melarang poligami sejak dulu.
Di kita
