The Malaysian Insider: For young Malay couples, an increasingly high price to getting wed

Berikut adalah satu artikel dari Malaysian Insider mengenai duit hantaran (dowry) dan mas kahwin yang semakin tinggi dibayar oleh lelaki Muslim di Malaysia kepada ibubapa perempuan dan Jabatan Agama.

Mengikut Quran dan hadith, hantaran (dowry) sepatutnya diberi kepada perempuan yang berkahwin, bukan ibubapa mereka. Dan ini bukan sebagai "bayaran" tapi sebagai hadiah dan membantu mereka mendirikan sebuah rumahtangga. Saya pun tak faham kenapa kena beri RM500-700 sebagai mas kahwin kepada Jabatan Agama sebab Jabatan Agama sudah ada banyak duit dan bukan Jabatan Agama yang nak kahwin.

"And give the women their dowries with a good heart." - Quran 4:4

"And give them provision - upon the wealthy what is appropriate and upon he of limited resources what is appropriate - a provision based on the best (the "known"), an obligation upon the doers of good" - Quran 2:236

Hantaran itu kezaliman.

Kris

For young Malay couples, an increasingly high price to getting wed The Malaysian Insider, 16 Sept 2012 http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/for-young-malay-couples-an-increasingly-high-price-to-getting-wed

At first glance, Amran (not his real name), 26, is just an ordinary young man living with his wife of a year at the Vista Angkasa apartments in suburban Kuala Lumpur.

But Amran lives under the shadow of an RM25,000 debt and is constantly hounded by Ah Longs — the name given to illegal moneylenders in Malaysia who offer instant loans at cutthroat interest rates.

“I don’t have many options,” said Amran who earns a meagre RM1,500 as a factory supervisor in Petaling Jaya.

“Each month more than half of my pay goes to servicing debts. It’s because my wife’s family set her dowry at RM12,000 as she is a local university diploma holder and along with the wedding and kenduri costs, it all came up to RM25,000.

“With my income of RM1,500 after deducting rent and car instalments, I can’t afford to be in that much debt,” Amran said.

Malay-Muslim tradition in Malaysia dictates two kinds of wedding dowries — the “mas kahwin” and “hantaran perkahwinan”.

Mas kahwin prices in Malaysia are fixed by local state religious departments. It is compulsory in Islam for a man to pay dowry to the woman on entering marriage.

Hantaran, on the other hand, is a tradition and technically optional.

These bride prices are increasingly seeing young Malay couples heading to the wedding dais shackled by debt as they struggle to deal with the rising living costs.

While the economy grew at a surprising pace of 5.4 per cent in the second quarter, blowing away economists’ expectations and potentially giving rise to a feel-good factor ahead of the general election, many young Malaysians — especially those living in the Klang Valley — are finding it increasingly hard to save money or have any kind of household disposable income.

Malaysia’s surprisingly strong second-quarter economic growth despite weakening exports was largely due to the buffer of ongoing construction projects and increased spending attributed to civil servant salary hikes and government cash handouts, say economists, which could point to uneven growth in the months ahead.

“Hantaran is what is most burdensome about marriage,” said another young Malay, Azri Mukhris, 27, soon to wed this year-end.

Like Amran, Azri feels caught in a similar trap. He said that he and his fiancée have had to tighten their belts since last year just to make sure they could afford to get married before the year is out.

This is due to societal pressure that leads to families setting high dowry prices, he said.

“During the merisik ceremony, we talked about the amount of hantaran; as my partner has a science degree, the dowry is higher.

“That was why, like it or not, I had to scrimp and save just so the wedding could happen by year-end,” he said.

When asked how much he paid as hantaran, Azri was reluctant to reveal the total wedding costs.

“Getting married requires all sorts of committments including mortgages, car payments, personal loans for the wedding and later preparing for the birth of children.

“That’s not even counting the cost of bringing them up and their schooling” said Azri.

Financial problems and high costs of living have been identified as the main cause of early divorces in the national capital.

Federal Territories Islamic Affairs director Datuk Che Mat Che Ali said the reason young couples below the age of 30 divorce early is because they were ill-prepared to shoulder the burden of setting up a household, especially when it came to finances.

In most cases, they were young couples who had newly moved to Kuala Lumpur.

These couples, the husbands in particular, Che Mat opined, were not yet financially secure and soon found high living costs in the city to have exceeded their earnings.

However, the Islamic affairs director told Malay daily Berita Harian in an interview earlier this month that divorces recorded in the federal territory have gone down significantly with just 64 cases this year up to July as compared to 1,828 cases during the same period last year.

Che Mat said that an estimated 20,000 couples got married each year and about half of that figure being young couples.

The first seven years are the most critical, with nearly 28 per cent of divorces happening in that period, he said, with most of those divorces involving couples aged 30 and below.

Statistics from the National Population and Family Development Institute show a drop in divorce numbers in 2011 with 27,355 cases compared to 28,035 case in 2010.

But according to Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Dr Mashitah Ibrahim, the rate is still worrying despite the 2.5 per cent drop.

She said that Selangor recorded the highest numbers of divorces with 4,409 cases followed by Johor (3,021) and Kelantan (2,429).

When asked by The Malaysian Insider, Dr Mashitah said there were many factors behind why young adults face difficulties when getting married, ending up divorcing, with one reason being the pricey hantaran.

“In Islam, mahar (hantaran) is not a must, but because there are those seeking status, by marrying the rich, the famous, thus hantaran prices soar.

“I don’t agree with setting high mahar as in Islam, the important thing is easing the process.

“This is because marriage is to sanctify relations between partners, and if we make it hard, ills like premarital sex will run rampant,” Dr Mashitah told The Malaysian Insider.

She said that the dowry prices set by state religious departments are already very low so as to be accommodating.

“But the woman’s family set high prices, which become a hindrance to marriage,” she said.

“Family members should understand the couples are just starting their lives, but some of them not only expect high dowries but that the couple support their siblings as well.

“Parents shouldn’t dump their responsibilites onto their newly married children as they are just starting out and have little saved up.

Hadzrien (not his real name) 26, divorced his wife, who is three years his junior, due to financial problems.

“My ex-wife and I got married just a year ago but high wedding costs as well as financial problems and an expensive loan forced me to divorce her.

“I have tried to be frugal, but the high costs of city living made it impossible to support her financially so we decided to divorce.

The RM20,000 loan he took to finance the wedding was too difficult to pay off, he said, to the point he had to sell his Proton Satria.

“Despite the divorce, I still have to pay off the loan for the hantaran.

“Getting married is supposed to be a beautiful thing, but because of the loan and the high interest incurred just to pay hantaran, it is now the bane of my life.”