{"id":8887,"date":"2014-06-04T12:14:32","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T04:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=8887"},"modified":"2014-06-04T12:18:03","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T04:18:03","slug":"government-should-prohibit-unilateral-conversion-of-minors-sis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/government-should-prohibit-unilateral-conversion-of-minors-sis\/","title":{"rendered":"Government should prohibit unilateral conversion of minors – SIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sisters in Islam<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sisters In Islam (SIS) calls on the government to prohibit the unilateral conversion of minors.<\/span>

The recent report on the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department’s (Jais)\u00a0<\/span>disruption of a Hindu wedding\u00a0is just one incident in a string of reports that have shown how the lives of citizens are being destroyed by silent conversions.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the root of this case is unilateral conversion – when one spouse silently converts his children to Islam without the knowledge or consent of the non-converting spouse. Zarena Abdul Majid, the \u2018Muslim\u2019 bride, is not alone.<\/span>

She is accompanied by the children of S. Shamala, R. Subashini, Indira Gandhi<\/span>\u00a0and more recently S. Deepa\u00a0<\/span>, whose fathers all unilaterally converted them to Islam in secret.<\/span><\/p>\n

The impact is not just felt by the converted children, but by their mothers.<\/span><\/p>\n

In one fell swoop, these women lost the rights guaranteed to them under civil law \u2013 specifically, the Guardianship of Infants Act (amended in 1999) \u2013 where non-Muslims have equal rights to the guardianship of their children and thus equal rights to decide which religion they would adopt.<\/span>

Legal recourse for the non-converting spouse often becomes an issue. Under powers vested by the Constitution, the civil High Court has the authority to rule on matters concerning a marriage in which one party had converted to Islam.<\/span>

Yet, there have been cases where the High Court has abdicated its jurisdiction to quash the conversion of the children to the Syariah Court, as in the case of S Shamala.<\/span>

Given that the Syariah Court has no jurisdiction over non-Muslims, she was trapped in a legal no-man\u2019s land with no way out.<\/span>

Her rights might have been violated, but she had absolutely no recourse to any legal remedy.<\/span>

This jurisdictional limbo also extends to law enforcement. The reluctance of police to take action against Deepa\u2019s ex-husband, Izwan Abdullah, after he abducted their youngest son is a case in point.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the Syariah Court had granted Izwan custody, the Seremban High Court later granted Deepa custody of their two children and a recovery order.<\/span>

Despite this, the police have yet to enforce the recovery order, claiming it could not act due to conflicting orders from the syariah and civil courts.<\/span>

What is abundantly clear is that none of these cases would have come about if unilateral conversions were prohibited.<\/span>

For as long as the courts, the police and law-makers continue to shift responsibility and delay addressing the crux of the problem, more lives will be destroyed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*\u00a0The views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of the columnist\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sisters in Islam Sisters In Islam (SIS) calls on the government to prohibit the unilateral conversion of minors.The recent report on the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department’s (Jais)\u00a0disruption of a Hindu wedding\u00a0is just one incident in a string of reports that have shown how the lives of citizens are being destroyed by silent conversions. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8887"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8889,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887\/revisions\/8889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}