KUALA LUMPUR – The Kuala Lumpur High Court today granted a 40-year-old woman’s application for a judicial review to challenge her unilateral conversion to Islam.
The appellant, an insurance agent, filed the challenge in an effort to quash the conversion made by her Muslim revert father following the National Registration Department’s (NRD) refusal to allow her to drop the term “Islam” from her MyKad.
She asserted that her father had unilaterally registered her as a Muslim when she was 10 without the consent of her Buddhist mother.
The parents had divorced shortly after her conversion was registered at the Selangor Islamic Religious Department in 1990.
Malaysiakini reported that parties in the legal matter were informed via email of the decision by high court judge Datuk Seri Mariana Yahya.
Senior federal counsel Ahmad Hanir Hambaly @ Arwi from the Attorney-General’s Chambers confirmed that leave has been granted with the next case management for the judicial review on April 8.
Hanir is representing three respondents – the NRD director-general, the Malaysian government, and the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais).
The court is expected to set a date to hear submissions from both parties on the merits of the judicial review.
The Singapore-born insurance agent currently living with her mother in Kuala Lumpur had said she never practised Islam and that she followed Buddhism.
An officer with the NRD office in Ipoh, Perak, she said, refused to process her application to revert to her original non-Muslim name and drop the word “Islam” in her identity card last August.
The officer had allegedly asked her to furnish an order from the shariah court before the NRD could process her application.
Following NRD's purported refusal to abide by a letter of demand issued by her lawyers, her legal team then filed the judicial review leave application with the Kuala Lumpur High Court last November.
She is seeking multiple court declarations, among them being recognition of her as a follower and practitioner of the Buddhist faith.
She is also seeking several mandamus orders (judicial order for a person to perform a public or statutory duty).
Among the orders include to compel the NRD director-general to issue her a new MyKad bearing her original non-Muslim name and with the word “Islam” removed; for the government of Malaysia to ensure the NRD director-general abides by the court order; and for Mais to remove her name from the Muallaf (Muslim converts) Registry, as well as to cancel the Islamic conversion card issued on her name dated October 1990.
The three respondents reportedly had earlier objected to the woman’s judicial review leave application, citing among several reasons that legal action should have been filed within three months of her conversion.
It is learnt that the appellant was converted on October 4, 1990. – The Vibes, March 25, 2021
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