KOTA KINABALU: The High Court has ruled that a Sabah woman was never legally a Muslim, finding that her status, as stated in her identity card, could not be derived from her Muslim biological father because she was born out of wedlock.
In a judgment dated July 9, Judicial Commissioner Dayang Ellyn Narisa Abang Ahmad allowed Jan Sarah Jainudin's originating summons, declaring that she was never legally a Muslim and that the Civil High Court had jurisdiction to determine her legal and constitutional status.
The court further held that the legal basis for classifying her infant son as Muslim could not stand if it was based solely on her alleged Muslim status.
Jan Sarah filed the suit against the National Registration Department (NRD) director-general, the Sabah government and the Sabah Islamic Religious Council (MUIS), seeking declarations that she was born out of wedlock to a Roman Catholic mother and was never legally a Muslim.
According to the judgment, Jan Sarah was born in Kota Kinabalu in 1992 to a Roman Catholic Kadazan mother and a Muslim biological father. She maintained that her parents were never married and that she was raised as a Christian before being baptised in 2012.
She said when she applied for her identity card at age 12, the word "Islam" was entered as her religion without any voluntary declaration from her or her mother.
After giving birth to her son in September 2025, she also alleged that NRD automatically appended the patronymic "bin Abdullah" to the child's name and registered him as Muslim during the birth registration process without her consent.
The defendants opposed the application, arguing that the matter was, in substance, an attempt to renounce Islam and therefore fell within the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court.
However, the court found that Jan Sarah was not seeking to leave Islam but was asking the court to determine whether she had ever been a Muslim in law.
Relying on the Federal Court's decision in Rosliza Ibrahim v Kerajaan Negeri Selangor & Anor, the judge held that such "ab initio" (from the beginning) cases fall within the jurisdiction of the Civil High Court because they concern whether a person was ever legally a Muslim, rather than whether they should be allowed to leave the religion.
The court found no evidence that Jan Sarah's parents had entered into a lawful marriage, noting that suggestions of an unregistered Islamic marriage were speculative and unsupported by evidence.
Applying Section 111 of the Sabah Islamic Family Law Enactment 2004, the judge held that because Jan Sarah was born out of wedlock, legal paternity could not be attributed to her Muslim biological father.
As a result, her father's religion could not be legally attributed to her for the purpose of determining her religious status.
The judge further ruled that administrative records, including identity cards and birth registrations, are not conclusive proof of a person's religion where the underlying facts are disputed.
The court concluded that Jan Sarah did not fall within the statutory definition of a Muslim under the Majlis Ugama Islam Negeri Sabah Enactment 2004.
The court further held that the legal basis for registering her infant son as Muslim and adding "bin Abdullah" to his name could not stand if it was based solely on her alleged Muslim status.
The court allowed the originating summons and ordered the defendants to pay Jan Sarah RM8,000 in costs.
