An insurance agent will know on March 22 whether she succeeds in her legal action to quash her unilateral conversion to Islam during childhood.
The Kuala Lumpur High Court this afternoon set the decision date after hearing submissions from the legal teams of the 42-year-old female applicant as well as the three respondents targeted by her judicial review.
The respondents are the National Registration Department (NRD) director-general, the Malaysian government, and the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais).
Judge Noorin Badaruddin earlier today heard submissions from the woman’s lawyer Shamser Singh Thind, Mais’ counsel Kamaruzaman Muhammad Arif, and senior federal counsel Ahmad Hanir Hambaly @ Arwi, who represented the NRD DG and the government.
“I will deliver my decision on March 22 at 12pm,” Noorin said.
The judge added that the decision on that day would just be a brief one and that the full grounds of judgement would be given to parties on another date.
On March 17 last year, Malaysiakini reported that the 42-year-old insurance agent filed the judicial review application to nullify her childhood unilateral conversion to Islam.
This is after the NRD allegedly refused to allow her to drop the term Islam from her MyKad.
According to court documents, the woman contended that her father unilaterally registered her as a Muslim when she was 10 in 1990.
The court filing claimed that after having converted to Islam that year, her father registered her as a Muslim with a new name at Selangor Islamic Religious Department.
The applicant claimed that her Buddhist mother never gave permission for her conversion. Her parents were divorced in 1993.
Ipoh NRD officer refused to change MyKad details
Born in Singapore in 1980, the insurance agent, who now lives with her mother in Kuala Lumpur, said she never practised Islam and that she followed Buddhism.
She claimed that in August 2020, an officer with the NRD office in Ipoh, Perak, refused to process her application to revert to her original non-Muslim name and drop the word Islam from her identity card.
The officer had allegedly asked her to furnish an order from the Syariah Court before the NRD could process her application.
After the NRD purportedly refused to abide by a letter of demand issued by her lawyers, her legal team then filed the judicial review leave application with the High Court in Kuala Lumpur in November 2020.
She is seeking multiple court declarations, among them that she is a follower and practitioner of the Buddhist faith.
She is seeking a mandamus order (judicial order for a person to perform a public or statutory duty) to order the NRD director-general to issue her a new MyKad bearing her original non-Muslim name and with the word Islam removed.
She is also seeking the same order for the government of Malaysia to ensure the NRD director-general abides by the court order.
She is further seeking a mandamus order for Mais to remove her name from the Muallaf (Muslim converts) Registry, as well as to cancel the Islamic conversion card issued on her name dated October 1990.
On March 25 last year, in spite of objections from the three respondents, the High Court granted leave to the insurance agent to proceed with the judicial review.
Today was set for the court to hear submissions from parties over the merits of the legal action. - Mkini
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