Camelia Pasandaran – Women's rights groups and Muslim groups have opposing perceptions of issues confronting women in Indonesia today.

"There are two groups in opposition with regards to women's rights issues," Fahmina Institute director Marzuki said during a meeting held by the National Commission on Violence Against Women in Jakarta on Tuesday.

He said most women's groups agreed that the principles of democracy and pluralism supported reforms on marriage law and Islamic family law, but that hard-line Islamic groups such as Hizbut Tahrir and the Islamic Front Defender opposed such ideas.

Marzuki said the government itself had been inconsistent in its attempts to reform the disparity between sexes. He said the Ministry of Religious Affairs had passed a decree in 2004 protecting the rights of women, but after the ministry came under attack from hard-line groups, it annulled the decree just four days later.

The decree stated that polygamy was contrary to Islamic law and therefore forbidden, allowed interreligious marriage and gave men and women the same rights in areas that included property inheritance.

Marzuki said that the timing of the 2004 decree was bad and that it would take another 15 years before society was willing to accept such radical changes.

Isnawati Rais, a lecturer at State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah, disagreed that the current law on polygamy should be amended.

"The strategy is not only about timing, but also how to ensure that people understand what the law means before they decide whether to revise it," Isnawati said. "As for polygamy, don't look at it from a negative perspective, but look its noble origins," she said.

Isnawati said that polygamy had long been practised in human history. "Islam came to the world to regulate [polygamy], and made some limitations, not to erase it," she said, adding that its use should be regulated by the Koran.

According to Sri Wiyanti Eddyono, a member of the National Commission on Violence Against Women, polygamy was just one of a number of articles that had to be revised. "Under the marriage law, for example, women are only allowed to exist in domestic areas. All of us who attend this discussion are sinful under the law."