Mixed marriages made easy

Mixed marriages made easy

JAKARTA (JP): Procedures for mixed marriages involving Moslems from Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia will be less tortuous in the future.

The four neighboring countries have agreed to simplify legal and administrative procedures for such marriages, and to set up hot lines linking their religious affairs offices to facilitate processing of marriage license applications, Antara reported.

The news agency quoted Ichtianto, a staff member at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, as saying that the new procedures will not undermine regulations in individual countries.

"There are regulations which are already identical because they are based on Islamic teaching, but there are differences on, for instance, the ages at which people can legally marry," he said.

In the past, marriages among citizens of the four countries tended to take a long time to process and usually involved complicated legal and administrative procedures.

With the hot line program, Indonesians in any of the three countries will no longer be required to get statements of their eligibility from each of the ministries of religious affairs, justice and foreign affairs as well as from the Indonesian Embassy in the country they were living in.

The new hot line will tend to the matter in a shorter time.

Ichtianto said the simplified procedures will help Indonesian Moslems working in any of the other three countries if they wished to marry local citizens but could not go home to organize the necessary administration. (rms)