KUALA LUMPUR, July 3 ― Labelled a “deviant” and charged with blasphemy for questioning points in Islam’s collection of sayings by its prophets, Wan Sulaiman Wan Ismail now faces fresh obstacles in his quest to clear his name.

Perak Islamic Affairs Department (JAIPk) postponed for a second time the Perak man’s proceeding at the state Shariah Court, as a case management originally rescheduled yesterday has been changed to August 13.

According to Wan Sulaiman’s Shariah lawyer, Aminuddin Zulkifli, the state Islamic authority had earlier postponed the case from May 21 to amend its charge against the 53-year-old, but failed to settle it up until the day before it was set to resume.

“The case was supposed to be called today but it wasn’t, and the court has allocated another date. They were supposed to amend their charges, but they didn’t provide it by yesterday,” Aminuddin told Malay Mail Online over the phone yesterday, referring to JAIPk.

“What they have in their mind is unpredictable, but most probably it is a question of facts,” he replied when asked how the charge would be amended by the prosecution.

Aminuddin also said that there is a possibility that the case is being delayed as there is still a vacancy in the state’s Chief Shariah Prosecutor post, citing another of his case that was delayed.

Yesterday’s postponement means Wan Sulaiman’s case will drag on for at least seven months after his house in Ipoh was first raided by the Perak religious enforcers, during which they confiscated his handwritten personal notes in addition to screening his personal computer and mobile phone.

That same day on January 21, Wan Sulaiman was charged in the Ipoh Shariah High Court under Section 15 of the Perak Shariah Criminal Enactment 1992, with “mocking, ridiculing or insulting Quranic or hadith texts”.

If found guilty, Wan Sulaiman faces up to three years’ jail, a maximum RM5,000 fine, or both.

But since then, Perak mufti Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria had changed his tone, claiming that Wan Sulaiman was instead a “deviant” religious teacher who allegedly lied to his students that he was a very respected religious scholar who had given classes to all of the country's muftis.

“I’m beginning to feel exhausted just thinking about all this,” Wan Sulaiman Malay Mail Online through text message, mentioning that he is feeling “emotionally tortured”.

“I really need support especially on financial. This is very stressful and I can't focus. I am now trying to revive back my repair shop business but really I need financial support.”

In May, Malay Mail Online reported Wan Sulaiman saying that he was immediately ostracised by his loved ones while his businesses also suffered as more people learned of JAIPk’s charge against him.

He was prosecuted purportedly after asking several religious teachers, including scholars in the Ipoh mufti office, the Perak religious authorities and even state mosque imams of the discrepancies between Islamic rituals and what was mention in the Quran.

Wan Sulaiman, an engineer by training, runs his own small businesses in Ipoh, but said after his businesses “collapsed”, he was forced to rely on a federal government lifeline programme for non-performing enterprises.