Mufti confirms children registered as Muslims without mum’s presence

 

Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, who met the children, says they do not want to return to their mother.

PETALING JAYA: Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Azinul Abidin has confirmed that the state’s religious department had registered single mother Loh Siew Hong’s three children as Muslims without her being present.

He also confirmed that the children’s father had been asked where Loh was, though they did not investigate her whereabouts further.

“The father came and brought his children to Perlis to be converted to Islam,” he said in a video posted on his Facebook page yesterday, adding that the three were all under 18 at the time.

According to Asri, the father had brought the children to the religious department in July 2020.

“When asked where their mother was, the father said he didn’t know. He wanted to request that his children become Muslim. So the religious department registered them as Muslim. They weren’t registered at the national registration department.

“Their father brought them. We didn’t research where their mother was. Their father said he did not know where their mother was, so we let them become Muslim.”

Yesterday, Loh told FMT she could not see her children for the past three years because she had been at a women’s shelter after suffering physical abuse at her former husband’s hands.

She filed for divorce last year, winning full custody of the 14-year-old twin daughters and 10-year-old son. The High Court in Kuala Lumpur had also ordered the police to recover her children.

The Federal Court previously ruled that the conversion of any child under 18 to another religion needed the consent of both parents.

Asri said the Perlis religious authorities were not aware that the Kuala Lumpur High Court had granted Loh full custody of her children in March 2021. At the time, the children were in Perlis.

“The children were converts, the father was in jail, so we took care of them. Then we heard that someone wanted to take them. We continued looking after them … because we didn’t know about the court order,” he said.

He said the children had been brought to Perlis before the court’s letter on the matter “reached our hands”.

“The court letter was between her and her husband, it wasn’t addressed to us.”

Asri maintained that the state religious authorities would not always side with Muslims when it came to issues of child custody, saying they were primarily concerned about who could ensure the child’s welfare.

“But if the child is already ‘mumaiyiz’ (capable of distinguishing good from bad), they can choose to go to their non-Muslim mother or Muslim father,” he said.

He said the father was jailed for drug offences several months after their conversion.

Asri maintained that the Perlis religious authorities had no qualms with handing over the children to Loh, if that was what they wanted.

“If they want to return to their mother, we have no problem. The problem is that the children don’t want to,” he said. - FMT