March 8, 2009: Jakarta, Indonesia - A MUSLIM cleric in Indonesia was questioned on Friday over his marriage to a 12-year-old village girl, police said. The marriage between cleric Pujianto Cahyo Widiyanto, 43, and junior high school student Lutfiana Ulfa in August sparked an outcry from civic groups in the world's most populous Muslim country.
Widiyanto and his supporters say his actions are acceptable under Islam but others say he should abide by state law, which sets 16 as the minimum age for marriage.
'He has been questioned since this morning,' a police officer told AFP from Semarang in Central Java.
Although Indonesian law carries stiff penalties for paedophilia, arranged marriages between older men and girls are not uncommon, especially in poorer rural areas.
Moralizing Clerics Back Anti-Porn Law but Take Child Bride
November 28, 2008 JAKARTA ~ Muslim clerics who claim to be protecting vulnerable women by backing a new anti-pornography law have come out in defense of a fellow preacher who has married a 12-year-old village girl.
The issue of child brides for religious men in the mainly Muslim country has became a subject of national debate since little-known cleric Pujianto Cahyo Widiyanto, 43, married junior high school student Lutfiana Ulfa in August.
His case went virtually unnoticed until Muslim conservatives started lobbying parliament to pass a new anti-pornography bill that was opposed by a broad spectrum of civil society groups and non-Muslims.
Passed in October with the backing of the very clerics who are now defending Widiyanto, the law criminalizes all movements and works, including poetry and music, deemed obscene and capable of violating public morality.
“These clerics are hypocrites,” lawmaker Said Abdullah, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, told AFP.
“They say the anti-porn law will protect young women, but yet they dehumanize them by marrying underage girls and supporting child marriage.”
Under Indonesian pedophilia laws, Widiyanto could face 15 years’ jail for having sex with a minor. He is under investigation but openly talks about his love of pubescent girls and his plans to marry more.
“There is no coercion. The girls like me and their parents have given their blessings,” Widiyanto was quoted as telling Detikcom news website.
And no one should interfere because child brides are allowed under Islam, according to Muslims such as Hilman Rosyad Syihab, the deputy head of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party which backed the pornography law.
He said Islam allowed marriage regardless of whether a girl had reached sexual maturity.
“But the husband can only have sex with her once she reaches puberty,” he explained, in contravention of the law which sets 16 as the minimum marriage age for women and 18 as the age of consent
Some thing stinks here because according to Indonesian Marriage Law 1974 (no. 1/74)
Marriage Age: minimum marriage age 19 for males and 16 for females; provision for marriage below minimum age, subject to judicial discretion and parental consent
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