Among the many changes sweeping Southeast Asia, trends in marriage are prominent. These include delayed marriage and increased non-marriage, and new developments in marriage across boundaries of various kinds–including the boundaries of nation states, of ethnic groups and of different religions. In September 2006, the research cluster on the changing family in Asia of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore held a conference on “International Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast and East Asia”, followed by a one-day workshop on “Muslim-non-Muslim Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast Asia”. This workshop brought together researchers working on Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore to examine various legal, political and cultural aspects of marriage across religious boundaries–specifically marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims. In order to bring the papers from this workshop to a wider audience, revised versions of a selection of papers, supplemented by one additional paper, were prepared for publication in this book.
From ARI workshop on Muslim-Non-Muslim Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast Asia, 23 September 2006.
