Siti Ruqoyyah’s father ran a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in east Java, Indonesia. She became well versed in Qur’anic recitation and the religious knowledge that her father was imparting to the students. At the age of nine, Siti Ruqoyyah was engaged to be married to the son of a religious scholar who also ran a pesantren. She did not know the meaning of engagement, marriage, husband or in-laws because she was so young.
After her father’s death when she was thirteen, she was sent to live with her uncle. Soon after, the family held a religious marriage ceremony (nikah siri) for her and her fiancé, though the two lived separately for another year. They were married in a religious court. When she asked why she must be married, her mother replied, ‘Your father passed away when he was building a pesantren. And you are a woman, so there is no way you can lead the pesantren. Therefore you should get married so that your husband can take over the pesantren.’ Her age was increased on the marriage certificate to sixteen; her husband was twenty-five at the time.
Thus begins the life story of Siti Ruqoyyah, a forty-three-year-old Indonesian woman whose experiences and the gender-based abuse she suffered in her two marriages sparked in her an interest in seeking gender-sensitive religious knowledge, and imparting this kind of knowledge to other women and their families in Indonesia.
