A 37-year-old woman has brought her appeal to the Federal Court, asserting that her conversion to Islam at the age of four was invalid. Her lawyer, Datuk Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, argued that her conversion contravened the Selangor Administration of Muslim Law Enactment 1952, which prohibited the conversion of children to Islam. He claimed that since the state law prohibited children from being converted to Islam, her conversion was null and void, and she was never actually a Muslim.
Malik explained to the three-member bench that the woman was born to a Hindu father and a Buddhist mother who converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man. He also highlighted that the woman’s father, who died in 1996, never consented to her conversion. The woman initially went to the Syariah Court to seek a declaration that she was not a Muslim after reading about the Federal Court’s decision in the Lina Joy case.
In 2013, she filed a summons at the Kuala Lumpur Syariah High Court for a declaration that she was no longer a Muslim. However, her summons was dismissed by the High Court, and her appeal was dismissed by the Syariah Court of Appeal. Subsequently, she filed a lawsuit at the civil High Court seeking a declaration that she was not a person professing the religion of Islam, naming the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais) and the Selangor state government as respondents.
After a series of legal battles, the High Court in Shah Alam granted the woman’s suit on Dec 21, 2021, declaring that she was not a Muslim. However, this decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in a 2-1 majority decision on Jan 13 last year. The woman was then granted leave to proceed with her appeal to the Federal Court on six legal questions, and her appeal was heard on Tuesday. The court only heard Malik’s argument and adjourned the hearing to another date to allow the counsels representing Mais and the Selangor government to file additional written submissions.
Lawyers Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla and Majdah Muda acted for Mais, and Selangor State legal adviser Datuk Salim Soib@Hamid appeared for the Selangor state government. The Federal Court has yet to reach a decision on the appeal.
