Keywords

In recent years, there has been an increasing tendency of Muslim businesspeople to use Islamic terms to sell their commodities. These are both traditional ones associated with Islam and non-Islamic ones originating from the West. For instance, in the realm of banking, several Islamic or Sharia banking and finance services are promoted with a free of riba (interest guarantee), as taking interest is haram (prohibited) in Islam. In other sectors, goods such as refrigerators, washing machines, and even cosmetics are also certified halal (permitted). To maximise profit, Muslim businesspeople have labelled many commodities halal, from books, skincare products, fashion items, household appliances to online matchmaking apps. Hasyim (2022, p. 1) writes, for example, “Because halal and haram have doctrinal positions in Islam, all Muslims are committed to upholding that difference in their daily life. Other than taking part in mandatory prayers, Muslims are regulated in what is permissible and impermissible in eating, drinking and other behaviours. Those who do not obey are categorised as sinful Muslims.” In Indonesia, based on State Law No. 33/2014, products that circulate, enter, and are traded in Indonesia must be halal-certified unless they are originating from materials prohibited under Islam (haram). This development has led Shirazi (2016) to introduce the idea of a “brand Islam” (Shirazi 2016), the idea that Islam has become a commodity brand where economic interests are paramount. She has pointed out that Islamic branding has been used as a marketing strategy that exploits the religious practice exclusively associated with Islam. In accordance with Hasyim's research (2022), the regulation of the lifestyle of Indonesian Muslims in production and consumption is influenced by the concepts of halal and commodification and the Sharia docrine, shaping their daily needs.

An important consumer group of halal goods and services are married couples. Marriage is a core institution in Islam; it is the cornerstone of the family. In terms of gender roles, the man is considered the head of the family, while the woman is assigned an important role in caring for the family and producing offspring. For marriage to take place between a Muslim man and a Muslim woman, however, suitable matchmaking is required, in accordance with Islamic rules. According to these, dating between men and women is not provided for in Islam, and physical contact between them is forbidden. A couple wishing to meet before marriage must therefore be accompanied either by their families or by an elder to ensure compliance with this prohibition; flirting is also forbidden. Therefore, Muslims have traditionally relied on social events around them to find a partner. It was mainly relatives, parents, aunts, and uncles who looked for a suitable partner at weddings, dinner parties or religious events.

Although most marriages are monogamous in Indonesia, not all Muslim men want to marry only one woman. In Islam, according to the Qur’an, Surah An-Nisa 3, it is permissible to marry up to four women. There are no current figures on the prevalence of polygamy in Indonesia. Historically, scholars have observed relatively low incidences of polygamy in Indonesia but have claimed that the actual number of polygamous associations in Indonesia is significant. Nurmila and Bennett (2015, p. 70) estimated the number of polygamous marriages at 4,800,000.

This chapter tackles online matchmaking, specifically the app AyoPoligami. It discusses why this app was of interest to Muslims, how it served different needs of men and women, and how it used the halal label to disguise immoral ambitions. In doing so, it contributes to one of the aims of this volume, to show how the aspirations for a Sharia-compliant life manifest themselves in online halal dating (see also Arnez 2023, this volume, Chap. 1).

It is structured as follows. The first section, drawing on prevalent scholarship on polygamy in Indonesia, reveals how contestations around polygamy have manifested in Indonesia from the pre-independence to the present. The subsequent part goes on to explore online Muslim matchmaking, looking at Muzmatch, Tinder, Minder, and its predecessor Salams and how applications such as nikahsirri.com or Aisha Wedding have blurred the line between halal and haram. We then zoom in on AyoPoligami and situate the app in online dating before we present the results of an experiment by the online magazine Magdalene.co. Subsequently, we will cover the registration process, app functions, user motivations, and the impact of commodification. Finally, we will conclude with a summary of our findings.

1 Polygamy Twists

Polygamy has long been a controversial, much-debated issue in Indonesia. Long before independence, nationalist women had demanded that polygamy be curbed, at their first congress in 1928, but they were cautious in their approach, to the point of avoiding the issue at the Federation of Indonesian Women’s Associations (PPII) meeting in 1930 so as not to antagonise Muslim groups (Feillard 1999).

Soekarno, Indonesia’s first president, who had promised to enforce women’s rights once Indonesia gained independence, threw these intentions overboard when he became president; he had four official wives. He thus became the epitome of masculinity and a role model for many men in Indonesia. During the regime of his successor Soeharto “progress was made toward limiting, although not entirely eliminating, multiple marriages” (Brenner 2007, p. 30), due to lobbying from women’s groups. In contrast, during the reformasi (reform) period, a pro-polygamy narrative resurfaced as a demarcation and counter to the former rejection of corresponding practices under Soeharto (Nurmila and Bennett 2015, p. 72). Many books on polygamy filled bookshelves in bookstores, and polygamy became increasingly popular among middle-class men and the upsurge of discourse was reflected in “polycelebrity,” which focuses on the polygamous activities of celebrities (van Wichelen 2010, p. 74). Polygamy was propagated by people like Puspo Wardoyo, a successful businessman who married four women himself and held two polygamy award events in 2003. One was organised by the Muslim Journalists Forum (MJF), which propagated polygamy as a defence against criticism from women activists (Nurmila 2007).

The controversy over what form of sexual morality would matter in Indonesia in the future manifests itself in the long-running debate over the Sexual Violence Bill and the revised criminal code (RKUHP) (see Arnez 2023; Nisa 2021, this volume, Chap. 2). During the disputes between advocates of the need for better protection of victims of sexual violence, feminists, human rights activists, and conservative forces, who mainly pushed for a ban on sex outside marriage, polygamy again became a bone of contention. Nurmila refers to this when she writes in October 2017, only 6 months after the protests of Aksi Bela Islam (Action for Defending Islam), where former Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), a Christian of Chinese origin, was accused of blasphemy, and crackdowns on minorities by Islamist groups were in full swing that she has started receiving pictures promoting polygamy. She interprets this as a response of Islamist groups to feminist action (Lamb 2017).

Those desiring to enter into a polygamous marriage often cite the practice of polygamy of the Prophet Muhammad and refer to the legitimization and continuation of polygamy based on the Qur’an. Here, the Qur’anic verse 4:3 is often quoted: “If you fear that you will not deal fairly with orphan girls, you may marry whichever [other] women seem good to you, two, three, or four (…).” However, as critical voices of polygamy among Muslim circles, for example, women in the Muslim women’s organisation Fatayat NU have argued, this verse should be read in context with the following verse “If you fear that you cannot be equitable [to them], then marry only one, or your slave(s): that is more likely to make you avoid bias.” (Arnez 2010, p. 83). They combine revisionist readings of Islam with discourses on gender equality and women’s rights to argue against polygamy, while members of the Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS), proponents of polygamy, practice a straightforward reading of the Qur’an and take the text literally (Rinaldo 2011).1

The legal ground for polygamy in Indonesia is Law Number 1 of 1974, Article 3, paragraph 2, which reads “the court can give permission to a husband to take more than one wife, providing that it is approved by all parties concerned” (UU Perkawinan No. 1 1974). According to Indonesia’s Marriage Law (UU Perkawinan), a husband should only marry one wife. But the court can give permission to a husband to marry more than one wife if desired by the parties concerned (cf. UU Perkawinan, article 3, paragraph 1, 2).

It stipulates that a man is considered to practice legal polygamy if his wife is unable to fulfil her obligations as a wife, physically disabled or has an incurable disease or is unable to bear offspring (cf. UU Perkawinan, article 3, paragraphs 2a–c).2 In addition, before marrying a second wife, the man must undergo a trial in court with the consent of the first wife, be able to provide for his wives and children and act fairly to them (cf. UU Perkawinan, article 5 1a–b). The marriage law also specifies that a man cannot marry more than four women. According to the Compilation of Islamic Law [(Undang-Undang Nomor 1 Tahun 1974 Tentang Perkawinan dan Kompilasi Hukum Islam (KHI)], the husband is obliged to obtain court approval, may not marry more than four wives, ensure the welfare of his wives, and guarantee equal treatment of all his wives. He must obtain the consent of his wife for a polygamous marriage to be valid. If the wife’s consent is not present, the marriage cannot be considered valid. Nikah siri, an official, secret marriage, is therefore not tenable before the law; this also applies to the revised criminal code, which will come into force three years after its enactment (see Arnez 2023).

In daily life, however, many polygamous families do not abide by the applicable legal and religious regulations, making polygamous marriage a highly problematic issue to this day. Indonesian men who do not comply with state legislation on polygamy continue to enter polygamous marriages, even without the consent of their first wives, and do not meet the material and emotional requirements to provide for their wives. The launch of AyoPoligami.com further heightened the controversy over polygamy in Indonesia.

2 Muslim Matchmaking in the Digital Era

Matchmaking applications have become an important vehicle for Muslims in the Middle East, North Africa, and America to meet their soulmates (Sotoudeh et al. 2017). Online matchmaking applications can provide a space to support polygamy, and some men use it for hooking up or having casual sex (Ranzini and Lutz 2017). As digitalisation has increased, traditional practices such as going to local dating agencies have declined in popularity. In recent years, therefore, a variety of websites and apps have developed to address these needs and facilitate online dating for Muslims. Cases in point are Muslim matchmaking apps such as Muzmatch, Tinder and Minder, launched 2014, 2012, and 2015, respectively. These apps claim to be exclusively for Muslims to marry and offer a marriage service for practising Muslims. They aim to provide clients with a partner for life in a halal way.

MuslimMatch is a matchmaking app only for Muslims, which advertises finding men and women a partner who share their cultural and faith beliefs. For the Indonesian context, Indonesianmuslimmatch.com has been developed which offers “a wide range of Single Muslim profiles from all major sects, both progressive and traditional.3” Typically, matchmaking apps are designed for singles but a match-finding app for polygamists was launched in Indonesia in 2017.

Tinder, a dating app created in 2012 by Sean Rad and Jonathan Badeen, also caters to online matchmaking demands. Dubbed the world’s most popular matchmaking app, the dating app is used in 196 countries, with Indonesia being one of the active markets (Bachdar 2018). The emergence of dating apps has transformed the dynamics of partner-searching activities, which traditionally begin with face-to-face meetings, romantic approaches, getting to know each other, and dates. Why women use matchmaking apps like Tinder is because they are looking for friendship, self-affirmation, and a spouse (Ranzini and Lutz 2017).

Once the perfect partner has been found, the couple can decide to enter marriage. Tinder can also be used to find a temporary partner instantly. In a concise amount of time, the app, with its location-based system, can “match” two different individuals, thus enabling them to have physical and emotional contact. Tinder does not promise a happy ending (i.e., actual marriage); it is more accurate to say that it provides an opportunity for single people to meet each other and have a date. This is different from the concept of the romantic match in Islam which must end with a legitimate marriage because premarital sex is considered a grave sin. To better meet the needs of online-savvy Muslims, the online dating app launched Minder or Muslim Tinder in March 2015. Muslim Tinder was explicitly designed for Muslims who want to find a partner and seal the relationship with marriage. Both its functions and the procedure are like Tinder. After downloading the app and signing up for an account, a user can browse the profiles of fellow Muslims. If the user found someone who happens to have similar interests, they can swipe the screen to the right, which signals an interest.

Now, if the other party happens to do the same, the app will show the chat room feature, in which they can perform a ta’aruf (introduce themselves). One difference between Tinder and Minder is that Muslims use Minder to be able to marry shortly or not to have long history of dating before marriage. According to Minder, expressing this interest can change the Muslim community’s negative stigma against online apps and prove that it can serve as a suitable medium for finding an ideal husband or wife (Dean 2022). Muslim Tinder first appeared in non-Islamic countries with a significant number of Muslim people wanting an app to help them find a serious partner and marry properly. However, the need to find a perfect soulmate is also present in Muslim countries, so Muslim Tinder is rapidly developing and spreading in Muslim countries. Users find and get to know their future spouse without having to date. There has been a bit of a shift among users because both parties can now get to know each other through the app.

Minder changed its name to Salams in October 2020 for the following reason: as a company, we asked ourselves if the name “Minder” fit with our purpose and mission which is to help connect and get Muslims married in a halal way. And the truth to that answer is that Minder was not the best name for that. We didn’t want to be known as Muslim Tinder. We wanted people to respect the app and use it properly. Therefore, despite us being a household name our entire company had to make the very tough decision on changing our name. We went through tons of surveys to come up with another name. We asked thousands of people for their opinions. Then one day, we suggested the name Salams. It was short, simple, and beautiful. Salams—to spread peace and a phrase used to open a conversation (Yalla Lets Talk 2021).

The new name Salams, therefore, should reflect the aim of making it easier for Muslims to marry a spouse in a halal way. This distinguished it from the name Minder, which, as can be seen from the quotation, had not correspond to this goal. From the customers’ point of view using Salams is an effective way to meet like-minded Muslim for marriage or practising Muslim men looking to meet practicing Muslim women (Dean 2022).

Halal and haram are used as differentiators between conventional online-offline matchmaking and non-halal platforms (see Nisa 2021). However, the line between halal and haram may be blurred, as such services are sometimes abused to satisfy personal needs. One example is the application nikahsirri.com, which was linked to the Partai Ponsel offering “halal” virginity auctions through secret marriages in Indonesia in 2017 (Darmajati 2017). Another example is the platform Aisha Wedding,4 which was established in 2021. It offers services for polygamy, young marriages, secret marriages, and child marriages. These two applications aim to help Muslims find their soulmate and become a movement for the “halalisation” of the Muslim lifestyle. Their aim is to use the halal brand to strengthen their position while still addressing specific needs of Muslims, such as polygamous marriage. The platform that is the focus of this chapter is AyoPoligami, which has facilitated polygamous marriages online ahead of the Aisha Wedding platform in 2021.

3 AyoPoligami

Due to the success of dating apps and online websites, Muslim entrepreneurs have tried to target specific groups that have not yet been covered by the market. Secondwife.com, for example, created by Azad Chaiwala, who lives in the UK and is of Pakistani origin, was launched as “the first and only online Muslim Polygamy matchmaking service.” In the UK, unlike Indonesia, polygamy is not allowed; therefore, Chaiwala encouraged men to sign up for marriage ceremonies that are not legally recognised. Any woman registered with Secondwife.com is open to the idea of becoming a second wife, and this website is still in operation (Azeez 2016). In April 2021, they launched a mobile app that can be downloaded through PlayStore. Secondwife.com was downloaded by more than 100 K users. However, it received a 1.9 rating with corresponding negative comments. One of the users said that this application is a waste of money and time, because even after the user has deleted the account, he is still charged for the subscription. Other users said to beware of fake profiles and scammers.

A few years later an Islamic alternative marriage app to connect Muslim singles and Muslim married men with second, third and fourth wives emerged in Indonesia: AyoPoligami, “Let’s do Polygamy.” Pandu Solusi, a startup from Indonesia, launched this app in April 2017. AyoPoligami uses the image of a man surrounded by four women wearing hijabs (representing his many wives) and three children as a promotion. AyoPoligami differs from Tinder mainly in its target audience: users with the intention of entering a polygamous marriage. In terms of technical affordances, however, Tinder and Ayopoligami are very similar. Like Tinder, AyoPoligami allows users to filter their potential partners by age, location, and status. Tinder uses four communicative affordances: portability, availability, locatability and multimediality (Ranzini and Lutz 2017, p. 82). Thanks to portability, users can use Tinder in private and public spaces, unlike traditional desktop-based dating sites. The availability of mobile media allows for spontaneous and versatile use of the app. Locatability makes it easier to connect with users near one’s location. Texting and photo sharing are part of the app’s multimedia capabilities (Ibid). Similarly, AyoPoligami assures portability in communication practices; users can employ it while commuting, waiting, at work and at home. Availability is given by immediacy. Users can chat or text their “soulmate” or “date” at high frequency. On Tinder, the user’s location is shown in the profile, whereas on AyoPoligami this is not the case. Screen sharing and image production in Tinder are obviously driven by the first impression of viewing the photo. When users have a potential match, they swipe right. In AyoPoligami, however, such a “swipe right” concept is not available so that multimediality is restricted.

Language can be both a facilitating and a hindering factor when using online dating services. The apps Minder or Salams are in English, and they offer their users partners from abroad. As most Indonesians do not speak English, it is less attractive for them to join these global matchmaking apps. Ayopoligami.com is in the Indonesian language and specifically targets Muslims living in Indonesia. It does not only facilitate communication among users but also makes it easier for Indonesians to find a spouse within the country. Users could download this app on an Android device through the Play Store app. Below is the visual representations of the AyoPoligami app, which could be downloaded on a smartphone.

The picture shows a man with four women and three children and a mosque in the background.5 This illustration clearly invites men to install the app on their smartphones; it suggests to them the possibility of having more than one wife. For women, it promises the possibility of financial security through polygamous marriage.

In terms of app accessibility and usage, it was very easy to open an account on this app. An email address and password were the only things required to register for membership on Ayopoligami.com. After providing an email address and password, users had to enter their date of birth and status. Members were not required to agree to or fulfil any binding conditions during registration. In other words, membership of ayopoligami.com was open to virtually anyone.

As for the visual design of the app, the background is a silhouette of a mosque, and four veiled women are shown with a man in the middle and two children (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1
A screenshot of a signup page requires details for email and other credentials. The cover of the page comprises a silhouette of a mosque and a group of people. The text is in a foreign language.

Ayopoligami.com signup page. Photo credit Lila Kurnia. Private documentation

Full size image

Lindu Cipta Pranayama, the owner and founder of this app, developed the concept based on his personal experience with online dating platforms and met his current wife through his own app. Initially, he developed a dating website for singles, but during the development period, the issue of polygamy came up. He wanted to create a trusted online dating site for Muslim men seeking multiple wives and provide them with a halal source for polygamy. As the app’s popularity increased, various misuses began to emerge, such as inviting female users to practice nikah siri, (Adisya 2017). A huge wave of negative reactions against Ayopoligami.com led to a temporary suspension of the app in September 2017, with a promise of “improvement.”

The improvement came in the form of additional requirements for becoming a member. The original version did not include ID card numbers as part of the requirements, which may prompt someone to use fake names and pictures. Following the upgrade, aspiring members had to fill in their ID card numbers and upload their accurate photos to maintain validity. Besides that, there were additional status options for (1) a married man who has obtained a permission from a religious office to marry again and (2) a married man who has not obtained such permission. However, the permission was not given before the marriage ceremony with a subsequent wife.

After selecting one of the options, the user had to wait for 3 days for the verification process and submit a certified letter from the local neighbourhood association where the user lived. Once verification was completed and the user found a suitable partner, a moderator from AyoPoligami created a private group to mediate between the users. At this point, the couple entered the realm of offline matchmaking, and this required an additional service fee around Rp 75.000. When interviewed about this, the founder of AyoPoligami said, “Three days for registration. They can look at the ID card. If it’s ugly, just find another. There’re a lot of free online matchmaking services out there” (KumparanTech 2017).

The app was taken off the market after it was criticized for using religion for profit, for sexual harassment against female users and for men using religious teachings to satisfy their sexual needs. The founder, Lindu, countered the criticism by saying that he wanted to evaluate and improve the registration format with strict criteria, presentation of an ID card and consent of the first wife. However, in the end, this bore no fruit. The application was permanently shut down on October 5, 2017 (Menur 2017).

4 An AyoPoligami Experiment

Our research is inspired by an experiment the bilingual online magazine Magdalene.co conducted in 2017 on the AyoPoligami app. According to its self-description, the magazine aims to “educate, empower and promote an equal society through solution-oriented journalism.”6 The magazine, which promotes women’s and minority rights, and is inclusive, critical, empowering, and entertaining. The website channels the voices of feminists, pluralists, and progressive groups. In August 2017, Elma Adisya, a reporter from Magdalene.co who had signed up as a user of the AyoPoligami app, tested the reaction of men who were reportedly seeking polygamous marriage. In her report, she describes how she was initially taken aback by the high number of registrations from men compared to women. At that time, there were 114 female accounts and nearly 600 male accounts registered. After wondering if she had come across a dating app for gay and bisexual men under the guise of Sharia because there were so many men, she first tried creating a male account, but she did not receive a response. She goes on to depict how she created a female account, complemented by a religious quote and a photo and how she suddenly had a lot of friends. One of the men who contacted her was looking for second wife because he was as “strong as ever” in bed but his wife was not. When Adisya asked him whether his wife knew about the man’s intention to take a second wife, he replied that he did not know but he respected his wife’s feelings. Another went further, asking her whether she agreed to practice nikah siri.

From the experiment, it emerged that AyoPoligami becomes a commercial medium by mainly exploiting men’s needs or gratification, resulting in legal prostitution and objectification of women (Adisya 2017). It should be noted here that the article published by Adisya, since digital attacks against Magdalene.co that began in May 2020, was temporarily deleted from its website. Amnesty International drew attention to the digital attacks against Magdalene.co, stating that the website had published numerous articles on prostitution and misogyny. Therefore, they argued, this online magazine, together with the media outlet konde.com, had become a target of harassment, threats and digital attacks that targeted critical voices, including activists and students, with the aim of silencing them (Amnesty International 2020).

5 AyoPoligami Revisited

Magdalene.co’s experiment prompted us to engage in our research on the AyoPoligami app. We were curious to what extent our results would resemble or differ from the Magdalene.co experiment. We interviewed several users about the app who preferred to stay anonymous. We found that gendered inequalities of the app are visible in different areas. In the following paragraphs, we present our findings according to the following categories: registration and functions and users, their motivations to use the app, and commodification.

6 Registration and Functions

On AyoPoligami, men could create profiles that contained various personal details such as occupation, characteristics, and the purpose of using this app. Here, male users could also provide the characteristics of the woman they were looking for and request photos from their female chat partners showing their faces, according to our female respondent A, aged 41. Interestingly, some profiles suggested seemingly opposing characteristics. For instance, the profile of one male user indicated that he observed salah (the five daily prayers) and was a makmum (engaging in congregational prayers). However, there were also references to sexual intercourse and breasts.

After signing up, the app displayed different functions such as “Profile,” “Meet,” “Gift” and “Chat.” However, these functions differ depending on whether the registration is for a man or a woman. M (aged 35), a male user, commented on notable gender asymmetry in this regard: “On this app, as far as I know, only men can become active users. In fact, most of the accounts belong to men, because, here, only men can search and ‘invite’ women users to be ‘friends.’”.

Male members could see female members, “choose” them, and “invite” them to have a chat after filling in their profile. As for female members, their profile was seen by male members, who would then choose them and invite them to have a chat, or just “like” their profile picture. If someone signed up as a woman and uploaded an exciting profile picture, male members could give a “thumbs up,” meaning that he only liked the picture, without inviting her to chat. He could also give her a gift in the form of a “ring.” Another respondent of ours (L, 38 years old) said in an interview that when she clicked on the photos of the men she had “liked,” she saw a description saying that he was looking for a lover.

As the app offered more functions for men than for women, gender bias was already built into AyoPoligami’s user functions. Men could invite women and give them a sign that they liked the way they looked, while women could only make a choice by accepting offers.

7 Users and Their Motivation to Use the App

Our observations are consistent with those of Magdalene.co in that most users of AyoPoligami were male. According to one of our respondents (S, aged 29), three types of male users engaged in a chat on the AyoPoligami app. She pointed out that the contents of their conversation indicated which of the three categories they fell into. Within the first group, she said, users employed Islamic forms of address such as “ukhti” and “akhi,” brother and sister, to indicate their compliance with Sharia law, which is derived from the Quran, Islam’s holy book, as well as the Sunnah and Hadith—the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. Secondly, some directly stated their intention to take a second or third wife. Lastly, as she pointed out, some contacted her using sexually suggestive, vulgar language.

Our male interlocutor M, fell into the second group. He told us that after 5 years of marriage he had decided to find a second wife with the help of AyoPoligami. He bemoaned the fact that his wife has not given him any children, and, therefore, hopefully, the use of the app will make him find a wife who is physically able to create offspring. He considered the inability to have children his wife’s fault.

In line with Islamic norms, he stated that “matchmaking must be performed with the assistance of a cleric or religious teacher and in accordance with the parents’ decision.” Before using the app, M therefore asked his parents’ trusted clergyman to help him find a suitable wife. Although M used to follow traditional Sharia matchmaking procedures, he eventually resorted to an online app because social construction requires that a marriage must produce biological offspring. This prompted M to find a second wife through AyoPoligami. M realised that this app did not originally comply with Sharia law. However, the fact that the new version of the app has required the submission of a first wife’s permission letter convinced him to find a wife using AyoPoligami.

The main reason female respondents installed AyoPoligami on their devices was to find a potential life partner to fulfil the obligation to marry based on Islamic teachings. In addition, it was also important to them that family and community members be involved in the selection of a marriage partner. The second motive for using AyoPoligami was various forms of social expectations such as to marry at a certain age and lead an economically stable life. “I think that it’s difficult to find a husband when you’re already 40 years old” (L, aged 35). L’s parents wanted her to marry at the right age, so L decided to use AyoPoligami.

One respondent also referred to financial issues when addressing her motivation to use the app. S (aged 41), a widow, said that her parents pushed her to remarry because they wanted her to have a prosperous life in the future. S explained: “My parents want me to marry again after my husband passed away, because I now have to raise two children.” After marrying and having two children, S’s husband passed away, and S was required to marry again to gain financial support. S eventually decided to become an AyoPoligami user to become somebody’s second wife.

S felt that AyoPoligami had helped her get a husband, although she now has to be somebody’s second wife. The decision to use an online app was due to her failure to find a reliable or trustworthy husband offline or through the agency of her parents. S had not succeeded to get a husband with the assistance of her family members and neighbours, and she expressed her frustration at not finding a potential husband: “The suitors who came to me simply didn’t meet my criteria, because I was already 41. That’s why I prefer becoming a second wife via AyoPoligami to being married to someone who is—sorry—crippled.”

S was not the only one who were concerned about social expectations; four of our respondents expressed their frustration at facing the pressure of having to produce children, marry at an ideal age, and meeting their economic needs through marriage. One responent, who works as a teacher, contended that Ayopoligami exploits the concept of Sharia. Nevertheless, she created an account on the application because she wanted to meet she social expectation that a woman must marry before she is 30 years old.

Our last example is the AyoPoligami user A (41 years). She told us that she had decided to become a second wife by entering into a religious marriage without the consent of her husband’s first wife. She explained her decision by saying that she wanted to meet the social expectation that women must marry and have children.

The following can be deduced from this. The male user M was a classic user in that he was looking for a second wife because his first wife had not given him any children after 5 years of marriage. He was therefore within the bounds of what was legally permissible. The comment of one of our respondents that she had received sexually suggestive comments is worrying. Like Nikah Siri's immoral offer mentioned in the Magdalene.co experiment above, it confirms critical voices accusing the app of exploiting women and camouflaging immoral sexual practices. As A’s case reveals, the consent of the first wife is not necessarily obtained so that AyoPoligami has fostered the thriving of illegal marriage practices.

Our female interlocutors’ statements have revealed another aspect that has not yet appeared in the discussions of this app: responses to age-related pressures on women or that they have become widows. They reveal that the respective female users would probably not have been interested in a polygamous marriage, but that their families pushed them to do so, due to social expectations. The app gives them the prospect of quick relief from their problematic status within the family. Our interlocutor S, for example, felt burdened by the prospect of living alone as a janda (widow or divorcee) and by the negative stigma held against a woman with a shaky source of income.

It could be argued that the use of the AyoPoligami app was a way for this user to avoid the social pressure and shame that Davies posits affects not only the individual person but also the wider family (Davies 2015, p. 32). It also ties in with observations by Winarta, Mahy and Herriman (2023,  Chap. 7, this volume) that janda are often stigmatised in Indonesian society, while the male counterpart duda (widower) is not.

8 Online-Dating Commodified

Unlike traditional dating practices, such as those arranged through lengthy family negotiations, AyoPoligami uses the element of speed and efficiency. Users can access the app directly from home and pursue their project immediately, so people in their environment can be largely unaware of the app’s use.

AyoPoligami has contributed not only to the commodification of polygamous marriages but also to the commodification of irregular marriages and gratification of sexual desire under the cloak of a Sharia-compliant lifestyle. Based on our conversations with users, it turned out that the new AyoPoligami version can be seen as a money-oriented platform that has commercialised romance and religion. The original version did not have any requirements for prospective members, such as uploading consent for another marriage by the first wife for male members. This shows that the app only pretended to be Sharia-compliant but was built with the understanding that it would do business with irregular marriages and condone the exploitation of women.

This brings us back to Shirazi and her concept of “brand Islam,” which, as she argues, is profit-driven, “exploiting the rise of a new Islamic economic paradigm, and not necessarily created with the aim of honouring religious practice and sentiment” (Shirazi 2016, 1). She has also pointed out that marketers tend to make use of the fact “that a consumer’s purchasing decisions, when intentional and linked to religious identity, are unusually predictable; therefore, these consumers are highly subject to manipulation” (Shirazi 2016, p. 4). While she was referring primarily to the food industry, toys, cosmetics, and fashion, this also applies to apps like AyoPoligami.

The fact that women were automatically offered fewer options than male users could be seen as “manipulation” of the users. The founder of the app assumed that they would accept this because of the persistent gender inequalities in society. Since it was also assumed that men would want to make full use of the app’s features, male members had to pay extra for these services. In this case, AyoPoligami managed to sell its “product” by using the narrative of polygamy as a religious practice.

9 Conclusion

The contestations around the AyoPoligami app cannot be seen in isolation from what we have called “polygamy twists” in this chapter. These, as relevant scholarly literature has shown, have shaped the history of polygamy from before independence to the present, albeit to different degrees, intensities and with different groups involved. In the 2010s, especially in the context of Aksi Bela Islam (2016 and 2017), the issue of polygamy became a subject of heated debate again in the context of legitimising the power of conservative forces, also in order to curb the influence of feminists who criticise and reject polygamy. A case in point is the attempt during hacker attacks on the feminist online magazine Magdalene.co in 2020 to delete critical articles on polygamy, including on the AyoPoligami app, so that the respective report by Adisya (2017) experiment is no longer available on their website to this day.

The AyoPoligami app can be seen in the context of efforts to establish polygamy as the “new normal” in Indonesia. As we have shown in the article, it is comparable to other dating apps for Muslims on the market. However, there are a few exceptions as the app only worked in Indonesian and targeted a particular group of users, people who wanted to (allegedly) conclude a polygamous marriage. As far as the technical affordance’s portability, availability, locatability and multimediality are concerned (cf. Ranzini and Lutz 2017), AyoPoligami is not as versatile as other apps.

Drawing on interviews with several female and male respondents we have shown that the online app AyoPoligami has used the halal label to make polygamy socially acceptable by commodifying both polygamous and irregular or secretive marriages. Male users have both subverted the rules involved in entering a polygamous marriage and also used the app for sexual affairs.

AyoPoligami can be viewed as a product of a capitalist system that prioritizes profit, where the pursuit of financial gain often takes precedence, even if there is only a semblance of compliance with Sharia law. The societal constraints that continue to affect women, such as the pressure to marry at a young age or to remarry after widowhood, have been integrated into the AyoPoligami app's business model, as they are part of the user groups it serves. The removal of the AyoPoligami app from the market does not diminish the significance of the issue. Instead of the app, online workshops on polygamy have gained prominence. However, these workshops come at a high cost with participants being charged over 3 million rupiah (equivalent to 200 US dollars). Thus, the commodification of irregular marriages can now continue within the confines of these online workshops.

Notes

  1. 1.

    A machine-generated summary based on the work of Rinaldo, Rachel 2011 in Qualitative Sociology.

  2. 2.

    http://www.pernikahan.info/2016/05/undang-undang-perkawinan-uu-no-1-tahun.html. Accessed 15 December 2023.

  3. 3.

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.indonesianmuslimmatch&hl=en_US&gl=US. Accessed 10 December 2023.

  4. 4.

    https://lifepod.id/tag/aisha-wedding. Accessed 14 December 2023.

  5. 5.

    See: https://blogs.dw.com/womentalkonline/index.html%3Fp=22645.html. Accessed 16 December 2023.

  6. 6.

    https://magdalene.co/. Accessed 15 December 2023.