YOURSAY | Wrong to ‘manipulate’ children in conversion row

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High Court declares Selangor-born woman ‘not a Muslim’, says her unilateral conversion to Islam at age four invalid

KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 — The High Court has declared a 35-year-old woman — born in Selangor to a Hindu father and an initially Buddhist mother — to be not a person professing the religion of Islam, ruling that her unilateral conversion to Islam at the age of four by her Muslim convert mother was invalid from the start.

The Selangor-born woman had said her case is not about apostasy or leaving the faith of Islam, but was instead about her never being a Muslim in the first place.

This woman, identified only as D to protect her privacy, was born in November 1986 to a non-Muslim couple married under civil laws via the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976. Her late father was of Indian ethnicity, while her mother is of Chinese ethnicity.

D will be turning 36 this year. She has spent the last eight years going to the courts to seek a declaration that she is not a Muslim, in order to have the National Registration Department (NRD) remove the word “Islam” from her identity card.

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