Peminangan dalam kompilasi hukum islam: antara legalitas yang tidak mengikat dan realitas sosial yang mengikat

Abstract

Khitbah or betrothal is the initial stage before the marriage contract, which has an important position in Islamic family law. In the Compilation of Islamic Law (KHI), khitbah is regulated normatively through Articles 11-13 but does not place it as a legally binding civil contract. In reality, Indonesian society interprets betrothal as a social and moral institution that has binding power in terms of customs and family ethics. The inconsistency between the formal legal position, which is not binding, and the binding social practice creates new problems, especially in terms of betrothal cancellation, return of gifts, and the dissemination of information through social media. This article uses a normative method with a sociological approach to examine the position of khitbah in the KHI and its contradictions. Meanwhile, a sociological approach is used to understand how society internalizes the meaning of khitbah in a cultural and moral context. Studies on khitbah have tended to fall into two broad categories. First, normative legal research affirms that khitbah is not a contract that gives rise to legal consequences, as reflected in the research of Ahmad Mustakim (2022) and Indira Ramadhani Lisyanto (2024). However, studies that integrate both perspectives comprehensively, especially in the context of the Compilation of Islamic Law (KHI) as a legal product in Indonesia, are still limited. This is important because in social practice, khitbah is often considered a social contact that creates expectations and responsibilities between families. Therefore, this article offers an interdisciplinary analysis between fiqh, KHI, and sociology to explain the duality between “non-binding legality” and “binding social reality.”