KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 23 ― A Muslim lawyers’ group today offered legal assistance to Hindus who have been wrongly registered as Muslims, following a report this morning quoting Hindu organisations as claiming that there are at least 7,000 such cases.
The Muslim Lawyers Association of Malaysia (PPMM), however, insisted that the only way for such Muslims to amend their religious status in official documents was to get an order from the Shariah court.
“PPMM is offering syarie legal services if it’s true that there are Muslims who were forced to embrace Islam or if their conversion to Islam was not done in line with Islamic laws,” PPMM president Datuk Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar said in a statement.
“In order to uphold our religious obligations, PPMM is ready to peruse each case if consulted to ensure that the constitutional right to freedom of religion is upheld,” he added.
News portal The Malaysian Insider reported today Malaysia Hindu Sangam, which is part of the Hindu Conversion Action Team that comprises eight Hindu organisations, as saying that the 7,000 cases involving mostly impoverished Hindus in the peninsula were a mix of those registered as a Muslim by a convert parent, as well as those involving clerical errors by the Home Ministry.
Malaysia Hindu Sangam president Datuk R. S. Mohan Shan reportedly said the Home Ministry officers had asked those affected to get an order from the shariah court instead to resolve the issue, but questioned why they should opt for recourse to the Islamic courts “when they are not Muslims”.
In the controversial child conversion case of M. Indira Gandhi, the Court of Appeal reversed last December a lower court’s order that had quashed the unilateral conversion of the Hindu woman’s three children to Islam.
The appellate court ruled that the civil courts had no jurisdiction over the religious conversion that it said was solely under the purview of the shariah courts.
