KUALA LUMPUR – Single mother Loh Siew Hong has filed an appeal against the decision of the high court last week to reject her bid to challenge her ex-husband’s unilateral conversion of her three children to Islam without her consent.
Loh filed the notice of appeal at the Court of Appeal today through Mssrs Srimurugan & Co.
In his decision on May 11, high court judge Datuk Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh ruled that there was no evidence the three children have stopped professing the religion of Islam when they were 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 the three children have reverted to the Hindu religion.
He said the certificates of conversion were issued after the first respondent, the Perlis Registrar of Converts, was satisfied that the legal requirements under Section 107(1) of the Perlis 2006 Enactment were adhered to when the children had professed the Syahadah proclamation willingly.
Loh, 36, filed the application on March 25 last year and named the Perlis Registrar of Converts, Perlis Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council, Perlis Mufti Datuk Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin and the Perlis government as the first to the fourth respondents.
The single mother 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 Registrar of Converts to register their children as converts without her consent.
The woman is also seeking a declaration that her three children, as children, do not have the legal capacity to convert to Islam without her consent.
She is also 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, and also other cards on their conversion to Islam that have been issued by other parties, and also prevent any party from issuing such a card.
The three children – a pair of 15-year-old twin girls and an 11-year-old boy who were formerly placed under the care of the Social Welfare Department – were released to Loh on February 21, 2022, after the high court allowed her habeas corpus application. – Bernama, May 15, 2023
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