PUTRAJAYA: The Federal Court here has dismissed the appeal of a 37-year-old woman who was converted to Islam when she was a child.
In a majority 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel chaired by Court of Appeal president Justice Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim reaffirmed her conversion.
Other judges on the panel were Federal Court judges Justices Mary Lim Thiam Suan and Abu Bakar Jais.
In the majority decision, Justice Abang Iskandar said that the woman’s case did not fall under the category that she was never a Muslim.
Meanwhile, Justice Lim, who held the dissenting view, decided in favour of the woman.
Justice Lim ruled that the woman was not a person professing the Islamic faith as her unilateral conversion by her mother was illegal.
The appellant was born a Hindu to non-Muslim parents and was merely a child when her mother converted her to Islam in 1991.
She said her mother married a Muslim man after divorcing her father (who died later in 1996).
Despite her conversion to Islam, the appellant claimed her mother and her stepfather allowed her to continue practising the Hindu faith which she was born into.
On Dec 12, 2013, the woman filed a summons at the Kuala Lumpur Syariah High Court for a declaration that she was no longer a Muslim.
The Syariah High Court dismissed her summons in 2017. She tried to appeal, but the Syariah Court of Appeal dismissed it the same year.
She then filed a lawsuit at the civil High Court seeking a declaration that she was not a person professing the religion of Islam and named the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (MAIS) and the Selangor state government as respondents.
On Dec 21, 2021, the Shah Alam High Court allowed the woman’s suit and declared that she was not a Muslim.
However, the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal on Jan 13, last year in a 2-1 majority decision following the appeals by MAIS and the Selangor state government.
The woman was granted leave to proceed with her appeal to the Federal Court on May 23, last year with six legal questions for the court to determine.
Lawyers Datuk Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, A. Surendra Ananth and Wong Ming Yen represented the woman while lawyers Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla and Majdah Muda acted for Mais and Selangor State legal adviser Datuk Salim Soib@Hamid and assistant state legal adviser Khairul Nizam Abu Bakar appeared for the Selangor state government.
