KUCHING, Oct 11 — The High Court here today has rescheduled the hearing of a case regarding a mother’s right to her child’s religious upbringing to January 18 next year.

The date was fixed after directions of submissions were made by judge Zaleha Rosa Pandin.

Previously, the plaintiff’s lawyer Clarice Chan pleaded to the court for the names of the parties to be simply referred to as "father”, "mother” and "child” throughout the court proceedings in order to protect their identities, to which the Senior Federal Counsel (SFC) Shamsul Bolhassan had no objection.

The 52-year-old plaintiff filed an originating summons in early August to seek a declaration that she has the right to determine the religion and upbringing of her teenage son, who at present has a Muslim name on his MyKad.

The plaintiff is seeking a court order to compel the National Registration Department (JPN), among others, to record changes in her son’s MyKad in relation to religion.

The mother named the Malaysian Births, Deaths and Adoptions director; the Sarawak regional registrar of Births and Deaths; the Identity Card Division director; the JPN director-general; JPN; and the federal government, as the first to sixth defendants.

Apart from Chan, the plaintiff is also represented by lawyer Joshua Baru.

According to previous reports, the son — born in Sabah and living in Sarawak — has followed Buddhism since childhood.

The divorced mother claimed her son’s Muslim father did not object to his Buddhist beliefs.

The teenager, born on October 18, 2005, never attended Islamic classes during his schooling years, never practiced Islam, and does not want to be considered a Muslim, she claimed further.

The mother and the boy’s father were married under Sabah’s Islamic Family Law Enactment 1992 on August 3, 1999, but the mother continued to practise Buddhism.

They divorced in 2010 and the mother was given sole custody of their son, who was raised as a Buddhist since birth.

Her ex-husband has remarried and has his own family now.

The mother said that on July 5 this year, she and her lawyers encountered issues when trying to update her son’s identity card information at JPN Sarawak.

She claimed that a JPN Sarawak staff refused to accept the application and handed her a different set of forms to complete.

The mother claimed that she resubmitted the application on July 18, along with supporting documents from her ex-husband and their son, which JPN accepted.

She said that after her lawyers wrote to the state JPN, they received a response on July 31, indicating that the department neither granted nor rejected the application and asked her to fill out additional forms.

The mother said the forms were repetitive as they were, in essence, identical — especially the second and third forms — save for the provisions of the relevant ordinance.

She contended that as a Malaysian citizen, she is entitled to correct the details on her son’s identity card in the relevant register in any part of the country.

She also claimed that her son is known by his Chinese name to friends, family, teachers and the local community, and they both participate in a Buddhist society here. — Borneo Post