EXTRACT "Malaysia’s converts test freedom of faith
By Sebastian Tong | June 26, 2006
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Five days after she declared legally that she had converted from Islam to Christianity, several officers from Malaysia’s state Islamic department turned up at the woman’s office and arrested her.
She said they took her, then 21, to a drug rehabilitation center for men, where a Muslim teacher counseled her on her conversion and on one occasion, caned her back. After two months, she found an unlocked door out of the compound and escaped.
“What they did was wrong. They shouldn’t decide our beliefs for us,” said the woman – who asked not to be named – of her ordeal in 1999.
While Malaysia is one of the world’s most modern and relaxed Muslim countries, its treatment of apostates, primarily those who have given up the Muslim faith, has ignited a heated debate.
Malaysia’s Federal Court could rule in the next few days on whether Islamic courts – which have authority over the country’s Muslims, accounting for more than 60 percent of the population – have the sole right to judge apostates.
The ruling comes amid calls for capital punishment for apostasy, and follows a spate of civil suits by Malaysians seeking official recognition of their decision to leave Islam.
Half of Malaysia’s 26 million people are ethnic Malays, who by law must be Muslim, while its Chinese and Indian minorities include Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.
Islamic law is selectively enforced by local officials in each of Malaysia’s 13 federal states. Unmarried Muslim couples caught in hotel rooms can be charged, while believers seen eating in the daytime during the fasting month of Ramadan can be fined.
Kelantan state, run by an Islamist party, has separate-sex supermarket queues, but the national capital, Kuala Lumpur, is more relaxed with plenty of dance clubs where men and women mingle openly. Yet many say Malaysia’s secular status is being eroded.
In December, Islamic authorities gave Malaysian mountain-climber M. Moorthy a Muslim burial against the wishes of his Hindu widow.
Officials said he had converted to Islam before his death, despite assertions to the contrary by most of his family.
“Apostasy is not a new phenomenon but the issue has come to the forefront because it underscores the growing Islamization of a country that was intended to be secular,” civil activist Haris Mohamed Ibrahim told Reuters.
Officials also destroyed a commune last July, arresting members of the Sky Kingdom cult which preached a synthesis of all religions and had a giant two-story teapot on its premises. The government said the cult practiced a “deviant” form of Islam.
BIG SIN
Malaysia’s civil courts have said they cannot recognize conversions from Islam and refer apostates to the Islamic courts, where sentences for various offenses range from caning to jail…More.
boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/06/26/malaysias_converts_test_freedom_of_faith/
malaysia-today.net/Blog-e/2006/06/malaysias-converts-test-freedom-of.htm
