Child conversion ban even without Cabinet decision, says Bar chief

Malay Mail
by BY BOO SU-LYN

KUALA LUMPUR, April 16 — A 2009 Cabinet “ruling” prohibiting unilateral child conversions has no authority of its own but the decision was valid as the same safeguard exists in the Federal Constitution, Malaysian Bar president Christopher Leong said yesterday.

Leong explained that while such government directives could be ignored, the Cabinet prohibition against one parent converting his offspring to another religion on his own was consistent with the Federal Constitution, meaning the ban was essentially in effect already.

Questions recently arose on the outcome of the 2009 decision, after another interfaith custody battle revealed that the Muslim convert father unilaterally changed the religion of his two children to Islam in 2013 — near four years after the supposed ban.

“There is strictly no need for any other laws as the Federal Constitution is clear,” Leong told The Malay Mail Online yesterday.

“If you read the constitution properly, you don't need any other law. But the problem is, people seem to be confused, so the government thought they'd come up with an amendment to the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976.

However, these proposed amendments were deferred by the government for further consultation, and then apparently quietly forgotten, Leong said.

“We urge the government to renew its initiative to introduce these amendments,” he added.

Leong stressed that Article 12(4) of the Federal Constitution — which states that the religion of a person under 18 years of age shall be decided by “his parent or guardian” — referred to both genders and both parents.

“Article 160, read with the Eleventh Schedule (of the Federal Constitution), governs the interpretation of the Federal Constitution and states that ‘words importing the masculine gender include females’; and ‘words in the singular include the plural, and words in the plural include the singular’.

This rendered unilateral religious conversions of any minor children in breach of this law unconstitutional, the lawyer said.

Former de facto law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said today that the Cabinet’s 2009 decision on child conversions was consistent with the country’s supreme law.

“The problem is people don't want to follow it. People decide which law they want to follow and the government is weak,” Zaid told The Malay Mail Online.

He said that back in 2009, Putrajaya had proposed amendments to the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act and the Islamic Family Law to ensure that issues like child support and custody would be determined by the court in which the marriage had been registered in, regardless if one spouse embraces another religion later on.

This worked for all religions, Zaid explained, and not just in cases of unilateral conversions to Islam.

“So theoretically, if one of the Muslim couple became a Hindu, you still have to go back to Shariah law,” said Zaid, who has served as de facto law minister in the Abdullah administration.

He added that another proposed amendment was to ensure that minors cannot be converted into another faith without the permission of both parents.

Last week, Hindu woman S. Deepa won full custody of her two children ― a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son — at the Seremban High Court.

The estranged husband, a Muslim convert born N. Viran who now goes by Izwan Abdullah, had snatched the boy from the mother two days later, insisting he too had full custody as awarded by the Shariah Court, after he converted their children to Islam last year without his wife’s consent or knowledge.

In its April 7 ruling, the Seremban High Court said Deepa and Viran had married in a civil union, which put the dissolution of their marriage outside the jurisdiction of the Shariah courts.

The police have refused to act on Deepa’s abduction complaint against the child’s father, with Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar citing the two conflicting court orders as the reason.

The case was another in a series of inter-religious tussles that have arisen from the blurred lines between the civil and Shariah court's jurisdictions that exists in the Malaysian legal system.