Religions > Atheism > News: Civil courts said Malays could not renounce Islam because Constitution defined Malays as Muslims.
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michael Gray" |
| Date: |
26 Aug 2006 09:37:19 PM |
| Object: |
News: Civil courts said Malays could not renounce Islam because Constitution defined Malays as Muslims. |
Ex New York Times:
http://tinyurl.com/gkpf7
"By JANE PERLEZ
Published: August 24, 2006
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 19 — From the scant personal details that
can be pieced together about Lina Joy, she converted from Islam to
Christianity eight years ago and since then has endured extraordinary
hurdles in her desire to marry the man in her life.
Her name is a household word in this majority Muslim country. But she
is now in hiding after death threats from Islamic extremists, who
accuse her of being an apostate.
Five years ago she started proceedings in the civil courts to seek the
right to marry her Christian fiancé and have children. Because she had
renounced her Muslim faith, Ms. Joy, 42, argued, Malaysia’s Islamic
Shariah courts, which control such matters as marriage, property and
divorce, did not have jurisdiction over her.
In a series of decisions, the civil courts ruled against her. Then,
last month, her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, appeared before Malaysia’s
highest court, the Court of Appeals, to argue that Ms. Joy’s
conversion be considered a right protected under the Constitution, not
a religious matter for the Shariah courts.
“She’s trying to live her life with someone she loves,” Mr. Dawson
said in an interview.
Threats against Ms. Joy had become so insistent, and the passions over
her conversion so inflamed, he had concluded there was no room for her
and her fiancé in Malaysia. The most likely solution, he said, was for
her to emigrate.
For Malaysia, which considers itself a moderate and modern Muslim
country with a tolerance for its multiple religions and ethnic groups
of Malays, Indians and Chinese, the case has kicked up a firestorm
that goes to the very heart of who is a Malay, and what is Malaysia.
Her case has heightened a searing battle that has included street
protests and death threats between groups advocating a secular
interpretation of the Constitution, and Islamic groups that contend
the Shariah courts should have supremacy in many matters.
Some see the rulings against Ms. Joy as a sign of increasing
Islamization, and of the pressures felt by the government of Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi as it tries to respond to the opposition
Islamic party, Parti Islam Semalaysia.
About 60 percent of Malaysia’s 26 million people are Muslim, 20
percent are Buddhist, nearly 10 percent are Christian and 6 percent
Hindu.
Malaysia has powerful Islamic Affairs Departments in its 13 states and
in the capital district around Kuala Lumpur. The departments, a kind
of parallel bureaucracy to the state apparatus that were strengthened
during the 22-year rule of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, run
the Shariah courts.
“Malaysia is at a crossroads,” Mr. Dawson said. “Do we go down the
Islamic road, or do we maintain the secular character of the federal
constitution that has been eroding in the last 10 years?”
In rulings in her case, civil courts said Malays could not renounce
Islam because the Constitution defined Malays to be Muslims.
They also ruled that a request to change her identity card from Muslim
to Christian had to be decided by the Shariah courts. There she would
be considered an apostate, and if she did not repent she surely would
be sentenced to several years in an Islamic center for rehabilitation.
Mr. Dawson said Ms. Joy had been interested in Roman Catholicism since
1990 and was baptized in 1998 at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Kuala
Lumpur. Because she considered herself a Christian, Ms. Joy did not
believe the Shariah courts applied to her. In an affidavit to a lower
civil court in 2000, she said she felt “more peace in my spirit and
soul after having become a Christian.”
Because of the death threats, including some calls to hunt her down,
Mr. Dawson said, he could not say where she was, and could not make
her available for an interview, even by telephone.
Similarly, her fiancé, whom Mr. Dawson referred to as Johnson, a
Christian of ethnic Indian background whom Ms. Joy met in 1990, had
received death threats and was not prepared to be interviewed.
Last month, Prime Minister Badawi appeared to side with the Islamists
when he ordered that forums organized around the country to discuss
religious freedom must stop. The forums, run by a group called Article
11, named after the section of the Constitution that says Malaysians
are free to choose their religion, were disrupted on several occasions
by Islamic protesters.
The chief organizer of the Article 11 forums, a well-known human
rights lawyer, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a Muslim, received a death threat
this month that was widely circulated by e-mail.
With the heading “Wanted Dead,” the message featured a photograph of
Mr. Malik and said: “This is the face of the traitorous lawyer to
Islam who supports the Lina Joy apostasy case. Distribute to our
friends so they can recognize this traitor. If you find him dead by
the side of the road, do not help.”
Mr. Malik, 36, who presented a brief in support of Ms. Joy to the
Appeals Court, said he was seeking police protection. “We must not
confuse the crucial distinction between a country in which the
majority are Muslims, and is thus an Islamic country, and a country in
which the supreme law is the Shariah, an Islamic state,” Mr. Malik
said.
Conversions of Muslims to Christianity are not common in Malaysia,
though most converts do not seek official approval for marriage and
therefore do not run into the obstacles Ms. Joy confronted. One
38-year-old convert, who said in an interview at a Roman Catholic
parish that he would provide only his Christian names, Paul Michael,
and not his surname, for fear of retribution, described how he led a
double life.
“Church members know us as who we are, and the outside world knows us
as we were,” he said. He was fearful, he said, that if his conversion
became public the religious authorities would come after him, and he
could be sentenced to a religious rehabilitation camp.
One such place, hidden in the forest at Ulu Yam Baru, 20 miles outside
the capital, is ringed like a prison by barbed wire, with dormitories
protected by a second ring of barbed wire. Outside a sign says, “House
of Faith,” and inside the inmates spend much of their time studying
Islam.
Paul Michael said he and other former Muslims moved from church to
church for services to avoid detection. They call themselves
“M.M.B.B.,” for Malay Muslim Background Believers. “It’s a group of
Malays who are no longer Muslims,” he said."
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: News: Civil courts said Malays could not renounce Islam because Constitution defined Malays as Muslims. |
27 Aug 2006 02:17:36 AM |
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In article <4712f2dogt6u3h6emk562h27v79fb70hbu@4ax.com>,
Michael Gray <fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote:
Ex New York Times:
http://tinyurl.com/gkpf7
"By JANE PERLEZ
Published: August 24, 2006
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 19 — From the scant personal details that
can be pieced together about Lina Joy, she converted from Islam to
Christianity eight years ago and since then has endured extraordinary
hurdles in her desire to marry the man in her life.
<snips>
“Malaysia is at a crossroads,” Mr. Dawson said. “Do we go down the
Islamic road, or do we maintain the secular character of the federal
constitution that has been eroding in the last 10 years?”
In rulings in her case, civil courts said Malays could not renounce
Islam because the Constitution defined Malays to be Muslims.
If there ever were an example of why church or mosque and state should
be separate, this is it.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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