The Minority Child Before the Law: Best Interests, Religious Identity, and Custody Disputes in Indonesia

Abstract

Family disputes involving parents from different religious backgrounds create complex legal questions concerning children's religious identity, parental authority, and the best interests of the child. This article investigates how Indonesian law addresses children situated at the intersection of competing parental religious claims. The research seeks to assess whether existing legal frameworks adequately protect children from being treated merely as objects of parental or religious contestation. Employing a normative juridical and case-based approach, the study examines constitutional guarantees, child protection legislation, family law, relevant judicial decisions, and selected custody disputes involving interreligious families. The analysis applies the principle of the best interests of the child alongside freedom of religion, parental rights, and the child's emerging autonomy. The article argues that Indonesian legal reasoning tends to emphasize parental authority and religious affiliation while insufficiently recognizing the child's independent rights and evolving capacity. Such an approach may create situations in which religious identity becomes determined through litigation rather than through a child-centered process. The study proposes a more consistent interpretive framework that places children's dignity, psychological well-being, and developing autonomy at the center of judicial decision-making. It concludes that minority justice in family law requires courts to move beyond binary religious classifications and adopt child-centered adjudication capable of protecting children from the consequences of interreligious legal conflict.