Court bars unilateral child conversions

KUALA LUMPUR: A court has reaffirmed that the conversions of minors to Islam can only be made with the consent of both parents and not just a single parent.

The ruling by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Oct 16 was seen as testing the precedent set by the landmark ruling in January by the country’s supreme court that overturned the conversion to Islam of three children of Indira Gandhi, a Hindu mother, by her estranged husband.

In the latest case, the first similar case since the landmark verdict, Justice Azizah Nawawi said she was bound by the federal court’s decision and ruled in favour of the Buddhist father who had challenged the unilateral conversion of his two children by his Muslim convert ex-wife.

The ruling invalidates the certificates of conversion of his two children, who were born in a civil marriage when his now ex-wife was still a Buddhist, issued by Malaysia’s Islamic authorities in 2016.

Justice Azizah noted in her ruling that it was not in dispute that the children were converted without the consent of both parents and therefore the court was “bound by the decision in Indira Gandhi case”.

The ruling compels the state’s powerful Islamic authorities to immediately cancel the children’s registration as Muslim converts in their records or Muslim converts’ register, a crucial requirement to protect the children from any intrusion in their lives by Islamic authorities.

The court also rejected a request by their mother for a stay to quash the children’s conversion to Islam.

The two children are currently under the father’s custody.

The two children, then aged eight and three, were converted to Islam on May 11, 2016 without their father’s knowledge and consent. That was also the day that he had filed a fresh application for divorce at the high court.

Separately, the Buddhist father and Muslim convert mother have been locked in court disputes over the custody of the two children. On Sept 13, the court of appeal decided that the father would have sole guardianship and custody of the two children, reversing a lower court ruling.

The father was reunited with his children who he had been separated from since April.

A court order bars the media from naming the family members. The elder child is now aged 10, while the younger child is now 6 years old.

Article reproduced from Herald Malaysia online