FROM EVALUATIVE RUBRIC TO PROCEDURAL STANDARD: RECONSTRUCTING MAQĀṢIDĪ REASONING IN MARRIAGE DISPENSATION CASES IN INDONESIA'S RELIGIOUS COURTS

Abstract

Law No. 16 of 2019 raised the minimum marriage age to nineteen for both men and women, yet child marriage has not declined. Petitions for marriage dispensation have instead surged, and nearly all are granted. This article explains why judicial reasoning grounded in sharia argumentation nonetheless leads to approval, and proposes a remedy. The study is normative-doctrinal, supported by socio-legal materials, and employs Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī's fiqh al-muwāzanāt as its principal framework with Jasser Auda's systems approach as a supporting one. Three findings emerge. First, judges establish an urgent reason through a three-stage pattern in which the maxim dar' al-mafāsid serves as the substantive resolver, so that premarital pregnancy almost automatically satisfies the urgency requirement. Second, the defeat of the child's interests stems not from judicial negligence but from an asymmetry of time horizons: the harm averted is immediate and certain, whereas the harm generated is deferred and probabilistic, so that a methodologically valid balancing still yields a ruling detrimental to the child. Third, correcting this requires inverting the function of maqāṣid from a post-decision evaluative rubric into a pre-decision procedural standard. The article constructs such a standard as four graded stages of examination with verifiable indicators, offered as material for refining Supreme Court Regulation No. 5 of 2019 and as a reference for pre-marital counselling in Religious Affairs Offices