GEORGE TOWN, June 11 — The teenage daughter of a Chinese woman, whose body was snatched by the state religious affairs department two days ago, has filed an application at the Penang Shariah High Court to challenge her mother's Muslim status.

Medelyn Teoh, who filed the application through Syarie lawyer Wan Faridulhadi Mohd Yusoff yesterday, claimed that her mother, Teoh Cheng Cheng, had never performed the sya'adah (proclamation of the Muslim faith) and therefore, never embraced Islam.

“In her application filed at 3.30pm yesterday, she claimed that her mother had made the application to convert to Islam in 1997 but she did not perform the sya'adah,” Wan Faridulhadi said.

He added that Cheng Cheng, 38, filled in the necessary conversion forms but did not get any response from the religious affairs department.

“She also did not receive the supposed religion conversion certificate from the department,” he told reporters outside the court this morning.

The state religious affairs department (Jaipp) interrupted Cheng Cheng's Taoist-style funeral on Monday and told her family that the deceased was a Muslim convert so she had to be buried the Muslim way.

They took her body to the mortuary to perform Muslim funeral rites and for her to be buried the Muslim way.

The burial did not commence due to the ongoing dispute over her religious status.

Cheng Cheng died early Saturday morning when she hung herself at her home in Macallum Street after a quarrel with her live-in Muslim boyfriend.

Wan Faridulhadi said Cheng Cheng had wanted to convert at that time as she was planning to marry her Muslim boyfriend but they somehow never got married.

Medelyn named the Penang Islamic Council (Maipp) as the defendant in her application.

Maipp is expected to file its affidavit-in-reply to her application at 11am today before Shariah high court judge Zaim Md Yudin.