Single mum appeals against court decision rejecting bid to quash children's conversion

Single mother Loh Siew Hong has filed an appeal against the High Court’s decision last week rejecting her bid to challenge the unilateral conversion to Islam of her three children without her consent by her ex-husband.

Loh filed the notice of appeal at the Court of Appeal yesterday through Mssrs Srimurugan & Co.

In his decision on May 11, High Court judge Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh ruled there was no evidence that the three children had stopped professing the religion of Islam while under the care of their mother. 

The judge said Loh, as the applicant, did not deny that her children continued professing the religion of Islam in performing the daily subuh prayers when they were in her custody, and that there was no evidence that they had reverted to the Hindu religion. 

He said the certificates of conversion were issued after the first respondent, the Perlis State Registrar of Converts, was satisfied that the legal requirements under Section 107(1) of the Perlis 2006 Enactment were adhered to when the children willingly professed the syahadah proclamation. 
 
Loh, 36, filed the application on March 25 last year naming the Perlis State Registrar of Converts, Perlis Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council, Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin and the Perlis state government as the first to the fourth respondents.

She is seeking a declaration that her three children are Hindus and that her ex-husband, M Nagahswaran, did not have the legal capacity to allow the Perlis State Registrar of Converts to register their children as converts without her consent.

She is also seeking a declaration that her three children, as children, did not have the legal capacity to convert to Islam without her consent.

She is likewise seeking a certiorari order to revoke the declaration of conversion to Islam, dated July 7, 2020, issued by the Registrar of Converts of Perlis in the name of her three children, as well as other cards on their conversion to Islam that have been issued by other parties, and to prevent any party from issuing such cards.

The three children, a pair of 15-year-old twin girls and an 11-year-old boy who were placed under the care of the Social Welfare Department, were released to Loh on Feb 21, 2022, after the High Court allowed her habeas corpus application.