Male Inheritance Rights in Marriage of the Lampung Indigenous Peoples Saibatin: Reconstruction of the Limits of the Applicability of Customary Sanctions in the Farā'iḍ Law

Abstract

This article examines the tension between customary sanctions associated with semanda marriage and the principle of al-anṣibah al-muqaddarah in Islamic inheritance law among the Lampung Saibatin community. Because semanda practices and their consequences vary across local communities, the article distinguishes restrictions on customary access to ancestral property from deprivation of an inheritance share in a deceased person's estate (tirkah). The empirical discussion draws on three focal interview cases from Pesisir Barat, Tanggamus, and Lampung Barat, conducted on 12, 18, and 24 May 2026. The findings document restrictions concerning access to ancestral land and participation in customary deliberations; The available case narratives do not establish that every disputed asset was individually owned by the deceased and formed part of the tirkah. Under faraid, semanda marriage is not recognized as a māni' al-irth, so where an asset is proven to belong to the deceased's estate, custom cannot by itself extinguish an heir's prescribed share. The article proposes the Compatibility Principle of Customary Inheritance Sanctions, a four-indicator framework to assess whether a customary rule can be accommodated as 'urf ṣaḥīḥ or should be rejected as 'urf fāsid. The framework preserves legitimate customary functions while requiring verification of asset status, protection of established inheritance rights, voluntary post-allocation arrangements, and consistency with maqāṣid al-sharī'ah.