Marriage Postponement During Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study of Its Implementation in Manado City, North Sulawesi Province

This study aims to identify the implications on the post-issuance of the Director General of Islamic Community Guidance (Ditjen Bimas) Circular Letter regarding the postponement of marriage since the second of April up to a new circular issuance on the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a field research, and the technique conducted during the Work From Home (WFH) period was to apply technology and social networks to assist researchers in obtaining data. The research stages include observation, interview, and documentation. The results find that there are three negative implications; social, juridical, and fiqhiyyah aspects. In the social aspect, the postponement of marriage in the pandemic period inspired some residents to hold unregistered marriage. In the juridical aspect, various individual interpretations "ijtihâd" were stated by heads of the Office of Religious Affairs (KUA) that exceeded their authority. Whereas in the fiqhiyyah aspect, the values of benefit which are used as arguments for justification of unregistered marriage are simplistic, because they do not use the ushul fiqh as a parameter.