Sex tourism in Indonesia sells itself as Islamic temporary marriage

CISAAT, Indonesia — 

Her first contract marriage was to a tourist from Saudi Arabia. He was in his 50s, and she was 17. They wed in a small ceremony in a guest room at a three-star hotel in Jakarta under a controversial provision of Islamic law.

An older sister came as her guardian, and the agent who brokered the deal served as the witness.

The man paid a dowry of about $850, and after the agent and the officiant took their cuts, she was left with about half that.

The newlyweds decamped to the man’s vacation villa in the mountain resort of Kota Bunga, a two-hour drive south. When they weren’t having sex, she mopped the floors and cooked, watched TV or chatted with the Indonesian maid. But mostly she just waited for it to end.

That took five days. The man got on a plane back to Saudi Arabia, where he unilaterally ended the marriage by saying the Arabic word for divorce: “talaq.”

She had never even told him her real name, instead calling herself Cahaya, an alias she has used ever since in a decade’s worth of contract marriages. She lost track of the exact number long ago, but believes it is at least 15 — all tourists from the Middle East.

“It’s all torture,” she said. “All I had in mind, every time, was I wanted to go home.”

“Nikah mut’ah” — or “pleasure marriage,” as the temporary arrangement is known — has become an economic lifeline in the mountainous region of Indonesia called Puncak. The practice has become so common that the area has become closely associated with what Indonesians often refer to as “divorcee villages.”

Cahaya said she knows seven other women from her 1,000-person village who make their livings this way.

Like prostitution, contract marriages are illegal under Indonesian law. But the law has rarely been enforced. Instead nikah mut’ah has grown into an industry, with an extensive network of brokers, officiants and recruiters that thrives in the gray zone between church and state.

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For many years, Thailand was one of the most popular destinations in Southeast Asia for Middle Eastern tourists — including sex tourists. That began to change in the 1980s, after a bizarre scandal involving a diamond heist and a string of murders created a diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and Thailand.

Indonesia was an obvious substitute: a nation that was 87% Muslim and whose people were already familiar to many in Saudi Arabia as immigrants who had come to work as maids or drivers.

Saudis and other Middle Easterners have flocked to the lush mountains of Puncak. In one town colloquially known as the “Arab Village,” restaurant menus and storefronts often feature Arabic translations. For those tourists seeking temporary marriages, experts say Kota Bunga is the top destination.

In the early days, girls and young women were offered up to tourists by family members or acquaintances. Today, brokers are in charge.

Yayan Sopyan, a professor in Islamic family law at Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University in Jakarta, said many of the Indonesian towns where the practice has become popular lack other economic prospects. The pandemic made things even worse.

“We see now this practice is expanding,” he said. “Tourism meets this economic need.”

Budi Priana, a small-time Indonesian entrepreneur who spent part of his 20s as a cook in Saudi Arabia, where he learned Arabic, said he first heard of contract marriages three decades ago when Middle Eastern tourists he was showing around asked him for help finding temporary wives.

He eventually started making extra money connecting tourists and potential brides with marriage brokers, augmenting his income from driving, interpreting, running an internet cafe and selling frozen meatballs.

He said the agents he knows have seen their business boom in recent years, with some arranging as many as 25 marriages a month. Budi, 55, sometimes receives 10% of the dowry for driving and interpreting. But he insisted that he is helping women find work, and protecting them as best he can.

“There are always new girls contacting me looking for contract marriages, but I tell them I’m not an agent,” he said. “The economy is getting worse, and they are so desperate to get jobs.”

When Cahaya learned about nikah mut’ah, she had already been married once — at 13 to a classmate from her village. Her grandparents pushed her into it. Her husband divorced her after four years, leaving her with a young daughter to raise and no financial support.

She considered jobs in a factory making shoes or working in a general store, but the pay was too low to make it worth her while.

Listening to her fret over money, her older sister confided that she had been a contract bride and introduced her to Budi, who connected Cahaya to a broker.

Each short-lived union earned Cahaya between $300 and $500, which has gone to rent, food and taking care of her ailing grandparents. It has never been enough.

“I wanted so badly to help my mother and my family financially,” she said.

Ashamed of the truth, Cahaya, now 28, has always explained her long absences by telling friends and relatives that she bounces between housekeeping jobs in different locations.

“They have no idea about this,” she said. “I would die if they knew.”

Three years ago, when a friend turned into a boyfriend, she decided to lie to him as well, going so far as to delete incriminating messages from her phone.

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Contract marriages fall into the broader and ill-defined category of unregistered religious unions, which are widespread in many Muslim-majority nations and pose a conundrum to governments — especially when it comes to protecting young girls.

In Indonesian law, the legal minimum age for marriage is 19 — but many religious unions escape government scrutiny and involve underage brides.

“People think the government shouldn’t intervene in religious affairs,” said Yayan, the Islamic family law expert. “The state law doesn’t define the legitimacy of the marriage, because it is stipulated by religion. That is the problem.”

Even within Islam, contract marriage is hotly debated. It is generally more accepted among Shiites, who say the Prophet Mohammad condoned the practice, which originated in the days before Islam as a way for male travelers who were already married to have sex without committing adultery. Sunnis believe Mohammad initially allowed it before changing his mind. Nevertheless, many on both sides consider it little more than prostitution.

The Indonesian Ulema Council, the nation’s preeminent organization of Islamic leaders, has also declared temporary contract marriages unlawful.

But attempts to crack down on the practice have been hindered by a reluctance among women to report their experiences as contract brides as well as collusion between marriage brokers, religious leaders and corrupt officials.

“There is no legal protection whatsoever,” said Anindya Restuviani, program director for the activist organization Jakarta Feminist. “We have the law, but the implementation itself is very, very challenging.”

Bintang Puspayoga, who leads the government’s Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, said in a written statement that agreements to temporarily cohabitate as husband and wife for compensation are not legal. In 2021, one local government in the Puncak region launched a task force to spread the word.

Eva Nisa, a cultural anthropologist and expert in Islamic studies at the Australian National University who has researched various types of Muslim marriages and divorces, said in an email that some government officials have started referring to contract marriage as human trafficking, and authorities have occasionally made arrests by raiding weddings.

Marriage brokers are easier targets than tourists, she wrote. However, the secrecy surrounding contract marriages makes it hard to collect evidence of coercion, exploitation or deceit.

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In 2018, Cahaya climbed into a car with several other women, all going to meet two tourists seeking temporary wives. One of the men picked Cahaya. The other chose a woman who called herself Nisa.

It was her first contract marriage. She had decided to try it — with the approval of her father — because her job flirting and dancing with men at karaoke bars to get them to buy drinks wasn’t paying the rent. Like Cahaya, she was raising a daughter from a previous marriage.

Neither Nisa nor Cahaya has ever turned down a contract marriage offer. That has meant disregarding an Islamic stipulation to wait 40 days after divorce to remarry. They often lied about their ages, since the men tend to favor brides under 19 to increase their chances of being chosen.

“I cried deep inside of my heart,” said Nisa, now 32, recounting her first contract wedding. “Who wants to sleep with an old man? I did this purely for the money, so my parents can eat and my siblings can go to school.”

With her encouragement, her sister also became a contract bride, bringing in a dowry of $3,000 for her first marriage because she was a virgin.

Nisa estimated that she herself has been in 20 contract marriages.

But unlike Cahaya, she quit. While applying for a visa to work in Singapore, she met an Indonesian man who was working at the immigration office, and married for love four years ago. Now the couple has two young sons as well as Nisa’s 12-year-old daughter.

“My husband knows, but he accepted my past,” she said. “It’s impossible for me to go back to the contract marriage world now.”

Cahaya said she too longs to move on.

Her most recent contract marriage was last year to a Saudi man who promised to treat her like a queen if she returned to Saudi Arabia with him. His offer — a $2,000 dowry, of which she could keep $1,300, plus about $500 a month — was too good to pass up. She asked her mother to care for her daughter while she was gone.

But when Cahaya got to the coastal city of Damman in Saudi Arabia last October, she said, the man turned her into a slave instead. She did all the housework without pay while living on the third floor of a large house filled with relatives. She said he spit on her meals, screamed at her nightly, broke things and often kicked her awake when she tried to sleep.

She said she attempted to run away several times but was always caught. Eventually she called Budi, who spent months pleading for help to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Jakarta and various Indonesian ministries.

Cahaya grew increasingly desperate. When she heard that her grandmother was dying, she tried to take her own life by cutting her left wrist with a knife, and was taken to a hospital. That expedited her case with the embassy, Budi said. In March, a relative of her contract husband bought her a ticket home.

Back in Indonesia, she has been earning about $77 a month ferrying passengers and food deliveries on a motorbike. She also sells meatballs for Budi and his wife, which helps pay for phone credits, meals and her electric bill.

She still hopes to get married for real again someday, and is terrified that her boyfriend will discover her work as a contract bride and leave her.

In the meantime, she has resumed working with an agent to secure her next marriage.

“I’m actually still scared,” she said. “[But] if there is an opportunity I would love that, because I need it.”

Yang is a Times staff writer and Sijabat a special correspondent. Staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.