Nov 28 verdict for bid by Mais, Selangor govt, to reinstate woman's conversion to Islam

A three-man Court of Appeal bench has set Nov 28 to deliver its verdict on the appeal by the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais) and the state government to reinstate a 35-year-old woman's conversion to Islam.  

Mais and the Selangor government are appealing to the Court of Appeal against the High Court's decision on Dec 21 last year, nullifying the woman's conversion to Islam by her Muslim-convert mother when she was four years old.

Justice Yaacob Md Sam, who sat on the panel with justices P Ravinthran and Mohd Nazlan Ghazali, said they needed more time to deliberate the issues raised by counsels representing the parties in the appeal.

"It is a case of public interest which requires us to scrutinise the submissions and case laws. We defer our decision to Nov 28," said Yaacob, who chaired the panel.

The woman, born in Selangor to a Hindu father and a Buddhist mother who later converted to Islam, filed an originating summons in the Shah Alam High Court on May 10 last year, seeking a declaration that she was not a Muslim.

She also sought for the National Registration Department (JPN) to remove the word "Islam" from her identity card. 
 
She claimed that her mother converted her to Islam in 1991 at the Selangor Islamic Religious Department. At that time, her parents were in the midst of a divorce. After the divorce, her mother married a Muslim man in 1993 while her father died in an accident in 1996.

The woman said despite her conversion to Islam, she continued to profess the Hindu religion and that her mother and stepfather had allowed her to practise Hinduism. 

In 2013, the woman filed an application at the Kuala Lumpur Shariah High Court seeking to renounce Islam, but her application for renunciation was dismissed in 2017, and she was ordered to attend a series of counselling sessions. The SHariah Appeals Court also upheld the ruling. 

The woman then filed the suit at a civil court, the Shah Alam High Court, in 2021 and succeeded in getting a declaration that she was not a Muslim.

In today’s court proceedings conducted online, lawyer Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla representing Mais argued that the High Court had erred in allowing the woman's declaratory application, saying it was a transgression of Article 121 (1A) of the Federal Constitution.
 
Article 121 (1A) gives power to the Shariah Courts to hear and decide disputes relating to the Islamic religion.

Haniff said the woman had previously filed an application in the Shariah Court to leave Islam, adding that her civil suit was an attempt to re-litigate what was decided by the Shariah Court.

Selangor legal adviser Salim Soib@Hamid, representing the state government, adopted the submissions made by Haniff.

Lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, representing the woman, argued that the civil court had the jurisdiction to hear and decide on his client's claim as she had never professed the religion of Islam.

He said the High Court was correct to decide that his client was not validly converted to Islam and that her conversion was against the state’s law of conversion at the material time, which barred unilateral conversion.

He added that the woman's father was still alive when her mother converted her and that the father's consent was never sought.