Prostitution Under the Guise of Religion: The Exploitation of Marginalized Women Through Temporary Marriage

Abstract

This study aims to examine the exploitation of marginalized women through temporary marriage practices conducted under the guise of religious legitimacy and to analyze how such practices may reproduce forms of disguised prostitution. The study employs qualitative normative legal research with a socio-legal perspective, integrating Islamic family law analysis with gender and social vulnerability perspectives. The data consist of Islamic legal literature, scholarly publications, legal materials, and documented cases concerning temporary marriage, women’s marginalization, and religiously framed sexual exploitation. The findings reveal that temporary marriage can become an instrument of exploitation when religious claims are used to legitimize relationships characterized by economic transactions, unequal bargaining power, and temporary sexual access. Marginalized women are particularly vulnerable because economic hardship, limited social protection, and structural inequality can constrain their ability to exercise meaningful consent. The findings also demonstrate that formal religious justification does not necessarily ensure substantive justice, particularly when marriage arrangements result in economic dependency, abandonment, stigma, or the denial of women’s rights and dignity. The study concludes that temporary marriage practices involving marginalized women should be assessed not solely through formal notions of religious or contractual validity but also through justice, meaningful consent, human dignity, and protection from exploitation. Academically, this study contributes to Islamic family law scholarship by introducing a socio-legal and gender-sensitive framework for examining how religious legitimacy can intersect with structural vulnerability and transform temporary marriage into a mechanism of exploitation.