Marriages among Muslims or Members of Ethnic Cultural Communities, A33 Family Code

1. Concept

Muslim – means “an adherent of Islam”. (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

ethnic group – refers to “a group of people who can be seen as distinct (= different) because they have a shared culture, tradition, language, history, etc.” (Cambridge Online Dictionary)

2. Marriages among Muslims or Members of Ethnic Cultural Communities

Art. 33. Marriages among Muslims or among members of the ethnic cultural communities may be performed validly without the necessity of marriage license, provided they are solemnized in accordance with their customs, rites or practices. (78a)

a. Muslims

1)  The Muslim Code [P.D. 1083] applies to marriages, their nature, consequences, and incidents between fellow Muslims, between a male Muslim and a non-Muslim solemnized in Muslim rites, between spouses who both converted to Islam after their marriage, and between a male Muslim and a non-Muslim entered into prior to the Code’s effectivity. It also penalizes specific offenses relative to marriages. (Malaki v. People, G.R. No. 221075, 15 November 2021, Per Leonen, J.)

2) The general law, the Civil Code (superseded by the Family Code), governs marriages not solemnized under Muslim rites, including those between a Muslim and a non-Muslim. Crimes and offenses in connection with civil marriages are defined in the Revised Penal Code and special laws. (Malaki v. People [2021], supra.)

b. Ethnic Cultural Communities

1) Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples – refer to a group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by other, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed customs, tradition and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and culture, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. ICCs/IPs shall likewise include peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, at the time of conquest or colonization, or at the time of inroads of non-indigenous religions and cultures, or the establishment of present state boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may have resettled outside their ancestral domains (Section 3[h], R.A. 8371 [1997], a.k.a. The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 [IPRA]).

2) Customary Laws – refer to a body of written and/or unwritten rules, usages, customs and practices traditionally and continually recognized, accepted and observed by respective ICCs/IPs (Section 3[f], IPRA].