http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070530/kyodo/d8pek3s80.html

Malaysia court denies Muslim woman's conversion to Christianity
Wednesday May 30, 5:19 PM

(Kyodo) _ Freedom of religion took a beating in Malaysia when the country's
highest court ruled Wednesday that a Muslim woman cannot renounce her faith
unless sanctioned by the sharia court, which is a near impossible hope.

In a decision that threatens to deepen further the religious divide between
Muslims and non-Muslims, Federal Court Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh
Abdul Halim said Lina Joy, 43, "cannot at her own whim and fancy simply
enter or leave her religion."

"Apostasy is within the jurisdiction of the Islamic law and the sharia
court. The civil court cannot interfere," he said before rejecting Joy's
appeal to get the National Registration Department to drop the word "Islam"
from her identity card.

The court's decision was greeted with cheers of "Allahu Akbar" by dozens of
Muslim youths who had earlier staged a special prayer outside the court
building for a verdict that "favors Islam."

Hermen Shastri from the Council of Churches, however, believed the decision
will not stop Muslims from converting.

"There will always be people who will exercise their rights to change their
faith, to live the way they want to. They will go on doing that," he said.

Joy was absent from the packed courtroom. She has gone into hiding following
threats on her life by religious extremists who condemned her as traitor to
Islam.

Born Azlina Jailani to a Malay Muslim family, she converted to Christianity
when she was 26 and changed her name to Lina Joy.

But the National Registration Department, which issues the compulsory ID
cards that all Malaysians over the age of 12 must carry, refused to remove
the word "Islam" from her identity card unless she showed a certificate from
the sharia court attesting that she was an apostate.

But converts such as Joy know the hurdle they face if they go to the sharia
court.

Apostasy, considered one of Islam's greatest sins, is punishable by
imprisonment or a fine under Malaysia's sharia law.

Converts also face being sent to "rehabilitation" centers where caning is
one of the methods used to force converts to recant.

While most prefer to keep silent about their conversion or flee to another
country, Joy decided 10 years ago to sue the department in the secular civil
courts.

She cited Article 11 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of
religion to all Malaysians.

But paradoxically, the Constitution also defines ethnic Malays, who comprise
about 60 percent of the country's 26 million people, as those who profess
the Islamic faith.

Under the law, it is even a criminal offense to preach other religions to
Muslims.

Her case has since become a rallying point between those who believed that
the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion has eroded and Muslims
who champion the supremacy of Islamic law over the Constitution.

The decision by the bench of three judges at the Federal Court is by no
means a unanimous decision. Ironically, as lawyer Zainur Zakaria pointed
out, "There seems to be a religious divide even at the bench."

It was a two-to-one verdict. The dissenting judgment came from a non-Muslim
judge, Richard Malanjum, who is a Christian.

Malanjum said non-Muslims do not have to furnish evidence of their religion
to the NRD, therefore, the department's move to force Joy to produce a
certificate from the sharia court is "discriminatory and unconstitutional."

He also said it was "unreasonable" to force Joy to go to the sharia court
knowing that apostasy is a criminal offense under the sharia law and she
would be punished.

Since conversion is as much a "fundamental right," Malanjum said, "The civil
court should not decline jurisdiction."

The majority verdict essentially left Joy to continue in limbo. She cannot
legally marry her Christian fiance without him converting to Islam.

The verdict will also impact several other equally sensitive conversion-rela
ted cases such as that of Shamala Sathiyaseelan.

In the case of Shamala, a Hindu, the civil court ruled in 2003 that it could
not nullify her two young children's conversion to Islam by her estranged
Muslim-convert husband, which was done without her consent.

At the same time, the sharia court did not have jurisdiction to hear her
application for nullification because she is a non-Muslim.

Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, who represented the Bar Council at Joy's hearing,
believes the matter is not yet closed.

"The fact that there is a minority judgment, a strong dissenting judgment,
only indicates the need to readdress the issues," he said.

Leonard Teoh, the lawyer on a watching brief for the Malaysian Consultative
Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, said it is
now up to the legislature and the government to resolve the religious
quagmire.

"Our next process should be the political process. We are going to talk to
the prime minister, to our politicians. In the interest of racial and
religious harmony, something needs to be done. People like Lina Joy should
not be trapped in a legal cage, not being able to come out to practice their
true conscience and religion," he said.
____

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1626300,00.html

Malaysia's Crisis of Faith
Wednesday, May. 30, 2007 By HANNAH BEECH

In what has been dubbed a blow to Malaysia's religious freedom, the
country's highest court on Wednesday denied an appeal by Christian convert
Lina Joy to make her switch from Islam recognized by law. A multi-ethnic
state comprised largely of Muslim Malays, Christian and Buddhist Chinese,
and Hindu and Sikh Indians, Malaysia has long prided itself on its diversity
of faiths. To safeguard this religious heterogeneity, the country's
constitution sets out a dual-track legal system in which Muslims are bound
by Shari'a law for issues such as marriage, property and death, while
members of other faiths follow civil law.

But the parallel system has occasionally faced snags. Joy is a Malay
originally known as Azlina Jailani, and by Malaysian law her ethnicity
automatically makes her a Muslim subject to Shari'a law. In order to make
her 1990 conversion to Christianity legal, she needed permission from the
Shari'a courts, which consider a renunciation of Islam a major offense. But,
since she is still classified as a Muslim by the state, Joy was not allowed
to have her case heard by the civil courts. Her six-year-long campaign to
convince the civil system to legalize her conversion failed, prompting her
appeal to the Federal Court, after the Court of Appeal rejected her claim in
September 2005.

On Wednesday, the Court announced that it had no jurisdiction over the case
since it was under the purview of Shari'a law, effectively punting on any
attempt to clear up the gray space that exists between Malaysia's two legal
systems. The ruling was greeted by shouts of "God is great" from many in the
assembled crowd outside the Palace of Justice in Kuala Lumpur. More secular
observers were far less jubilant. "I see this case not just as a question of
religious preference but one of a potential dismantling of Malaysia's
democracy, which is based on a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state," warned
Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a member of Joy's legal team, before the verdict was
announced. "I fear the political process in Malaysia is overtaking the legal
process."

The Joy verdict, which will likely become a precedent for several other
pending conversion cases, is seen by many in Malaysia as evidence of how
religious politics are cleaving the nation, with a creeping Islamization
undermining the rights of both non-Muslims and more moderate adherents to
Islam. Last November, at a party conference for the Muslim-dominated United
Malays National Organization ruling party, one delegate vowed he would be
willing to "bathe in blood" to defend his ethnicity - and, by extension, his
religion. In several Malaysian states, forsaking Islam is a crime punishable
by prison time.

Earlier this week, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who in
December acknowledged that race relations in his homeland were "fragile,"
hosted the World Islamic Economic Forum in Kuala Lumpur. In an era where
Islam is so often partnered with extremism and autocratic governance,
Malaysia was held up at the annual conference as a model of a moderate
Muslim nation committed to safeguarding the rights of its diverse
population. But the Federal Court's verdict on Joy's case, which represented
her last legal recourse, may undercut that reputation. After all, what is
religious freedom if a 42-year-old Malay woman isn't allowed to follow the
faith of her choosing?
____

Federal Court Dismisses Lina Joy's Appeal To Drop Islam In IC
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news.php?id=264831

Malaysia woman loses appeal on religion
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070530/afp/070530092931int.html

Lina Joy loses appeal to drop 'Islam' from her NRIC
http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=18077
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