PETALING JAYA, July 6 — The National Fatwa Council (NFC) maintains that any child whose parent embraces Islam must follow suit, despite the Cabinet’s decision yesterday to take off the table a controversial proposed law allowing the unilateral conversion of minors to the religion.

The Najib administration retracted speedily an amendment to the Administration of the Religion of Islam (Federal Territories) Bill 2013 pending further study, in the wake of widespread complaint by non-Muslim groups and disagreement from some ministers.

“From the view of Islam, if either the husband or wife embraces Islam, their child who is underage must follow Islam,” NFC chair Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Abdul Shukor Husin was quoted saying by Malay daily Utusan Malaysia today.

He told the broadsheet the council had decided on the matter at its 87th conference four years ago, saying that it was based on a saying by Islam’s Prophet Muhammad that the religion was supreme.

The council had also decided that the Muslim parent would have custody of the child, Abdul Shukor was reported as saying.

The government’s latest move to formalise the unilateral conversion of minors into federal law, which politicians and non-Muslim groups have described as unfair, triggered an uproar among the country’s non-Muslim minorities when the proposal was tabled for first reading in Parliament last week.

Leaders from both sides of the political aisle have openly opposed the proposed amendment, including Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz, the minister who had announced the Cabinet prohibition on unilateral child conversion in 2009, speaking out against a proposed law that aims to defeat the decision from four years ago.

In 2009, as then minister in charge of law, Nazri had said the government would ban the unilateral conversion of those aged below 18 to Islam.

Despite this, section 107(b) of the Administration of the Religion of Islam (Federal Territories) Bill 2013, which critics have said would do away with the need for consent from both parents for a child’s conversion to Islam, was introduced in Parliament last Wednesday.

Custodial tussles in cases of unilateral child conversions have been a growing concern over the years and provide a high-profile glimpse of the concerns of Malaysia’s religious minorities over the perceived dominance of Islam in the country.

It also highlights the complications of Malaysia’s dual legal systems where Muslims are bound by both civil and syariah laws, the latter of which do not apply to or recognise non-Muslims.

Cases since Nazri’s 2009 announcement, such as that of a Hindu mother in Negri Sembilan who discovered in April her estranged husband had converted their two underage children to Islam after he had done so a year earlier without her knowledge, also illustrate the lack of adherence to the ruling.