STATE authorities have objected to a 40-year-old woman’s legal bid to nullify her childhood conversion to Islam, reported Malaysiakini, citing court documents.

The parties are the National Registration Department (NRD), the government and the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais), who contend that, among other reasons, the matter comes under the shariah court and as such, the Kuala Lumpur High Court has no jurisdiction to hear it.

The parties have cited the Lina Joy case, whereby the Federal Court in 2007 dismissed her appeal to have the word “Islam” removed from her identity card, and that she needed the shariah court to certify her renouncement of the religion first before the NRD could make the amendment.

The 40-year-old woman in the current case is an insurance agent who said in her court documents that she was converted to Islam by her Muslim convert father in 1990 when she was 10 years old, without her mother’s consent.

Her mother, whom she currently lives with in Kuala Lumpur, is a practising Buddhist, and has been divorced from her father since 1993.

The insurance agent said she has never practised Islam and is following Buddhism instead.

She filed her legal challenge in November after a failed bid at the NRD office in Ipoh, Perak, last August, to get her original non-Muslim name printed on her identity card, as well as to remove the word “Islam”.

In court documents, the woman cited the 2018 Federal Court’s decision to quash the unilateral conversion of kindergarten teacher M. Indira Gandhi’s three children by her Muslim convert ex-husband.

The NRD, government and Mais are also objecting to the insurance agent’s challenge on grounds that her bid was filed outside the three-month period since the unilateral conversion event, based on provisions in the Rules of Court 2012. They contend that the filing period expired on January 4, 1991.

They also want the shariah court to determine the woman’s religious status first, and issue her a certificate, before the NRD can remove the word “Islam” from her identity card. – March 17, 2021.