In my previous post, I described how the internet received my court judgment before I did. That judgement – the one I found online – was the May 2025 order directing me to undergo 60 istitabah sessions, which I wrote about in the previous post. Today, 25th May 2026, I finally received the official grounds of the January 2026 judgment – the final rejection in my Syariah High Court case – as part of my Syariah Appeal Court filing. The official grounds include additional observations about my conduct during the 60 istitabah (Repentance) sessions I was ordered to attend after the May 2025 judgment.

But to understand the final judgment, you first need to know what each side put to the court in writing. Because when you read the judgment against the submissions, something becomes clear: the court did not quite answer the case that was before it.

What I Argued

I filed my written submission on 22 April 2025. I was representing myself. I structured my case around three points.

The first was jurisdiction. Section 61(3)(b)(x) of the Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003 expressly gives the Syariah High Court the power to hear applications for a declaration that a person is no longer a Muslim. I am a person whose administrative record identifies me as Muslim. Only this court can issue the order needed to change that record at the National Registration Department. That is why I am here – not to debate theology, but to seek a lawful declaration so that my legal status can reflect my actual belief.

The second was evidence of my Christian faith. I placed before the court my baptism certificate, the testimony of my mother, the testimony of a close friend who was baptised alongside me, and the testimony of one of my pastors who testified that I attend church service regularly, serves in the church as well and even showed the court during cross-examination my marriage photos in the church that I posted on Facebook. I stated clearly that I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord, that I have practised the Christian faith consistently since around 2010, and that I continue to do so. I was baptised in 2016 as a public declaration of that commitment.

The third was the constitutional framework. Article 11(1) of the Federal Constitution guarantees every person the right to profess and practise their religion. The Supreme Court in Minister for Home Affairs v Jamaluddin bin Othman [1989] 1 MLJ 418 held that no authority – including a minister – has the power to deprive a person of that right. Article 4(1), Article 74, and Article 75 of the Constitution, read together with Item 1, State List, Ninth Schedule, make clear that state law operates within constitutional limits. Where state law conflicts with a fundamental right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, the Constitution prevails.

I also made one argument that I consider particularly important. This case, I submitted, is not about whether I am a Muslim in a theological sense. It is about whether a status recorded in an administrative document – my MyKad – reflects reality. The Court of Appeal in Ketua Pegawai Penguatkuasa Agama & Ors v Maqsood Ahmad [2021] 1 MLJ 120 has stated plainly that a MyKad is not conclusive proof of a person’s religious identity. It is a record. Records can be wrong. The court’s role here is to determine whether the record reflects the truth – not to adjudicate my sincerity as a believer.

I also noted, in my reply submission filed on 16 June 2025, that the defendant’s entire written submission failed to engage with a single one of the constitutional arguments I had raised. Not one. I had also applied for the court to set aside MAIS’s submission, for failing to comply with court’s instructed deadline. But as I documented in my previous post, the judgment itself was dated six days before the defendant even filed their submission. That alone raises serious concerns about procedural fairness.

What the Defendant Argued

The defendant – MAIS – filed their written submission on 9 June 2025, fourteen days after the court’s deadline. I received my copy only because I asked for it.

Their submission raised four issues.

On jurisdiction, they accepted the court has jurisdiction – but argued Section 61(3)(b)(x) was never meant for someone seeking to leave Islam voluntarily. They said it was designed only for technical cases, such as a conversion that was never completed properly. They relied on Majlis Agama Islam Pulau Pinang lwn Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah and the Ridhuan Ee Chee Kuan lwn Majlis Agama Islam Selangor syariah court case.

On whether I am Muslim, they relied on Section 2(b) of the same Enactment – which defines “Muslim” to include a person whose parents were Muslim at the time of birth. They argued that because both my parents were Muslim when I was born, I am Muslim under the law, and no amount of evidence about my actual practice changes that.

On the standard of proof, they argued my three witnesses were all personally connected to me and their testimony was therefore tainted with tohmah – a concept in Islamic evidence law meaning a conflict of interest that affects credibility.

On istitabah, they argued that under Islamic law, a person showing inclination to leave the faith must be given the opportunity to repent. They cited Quranic verses and classical scholarship to support this position, and asked the court to order me to undergo the istitabah process.

What the Court Decided

The judgment, dated 29 January 2026 and signed by the presiding judge, framed the issues as follows: first, whether I had embraced Islam validly; second, whether I could be declared no longer a Muslim.

That framing is worth pausing on. Section 61(3)(b)(x) gives the court jurisdiction to hear an application for a declaration that a person is no longer a Muslim. The provision does not ask whether a person embraced Islam validly. It asks about their current status – what they profess now. The court’s first issue reoriented the entire inquiry toward the circumstances of my birth and upbringing rather than my present profession of faith.

Having found that my Islamic status is valid and subsisting – because I was born to Muslim parents – the court then turned to the second issue. It addressed my Article 11(1) argument in a single paragraph. It said that Article 11 cannot be read “literally,” and that Article 11(4) and Article 3(1) impose limitations. It did not engage with Jamaluddin bin Othman. It did not engage with Maqsood Ahmad. It did not address whether the constitutional right to profess and practise a religion extends to someone who has never voluntarily professed Islam at all.

The court made a finding that I found difficult to understand. After almost eight years of telling the court I am a Christian – after testimony from three witnesses, a baptism certificate, a written submission grounded in the Federal Constitution, and repeatedly standing firm on my Christian faith through 72 “counselling” sessions – the court found that there was no clear utterance or obvious act on my part that would constitute rejection of Islam under Hukum Syarak and concluded that I “do not fully understand Islam” and that it is the defendant’s duty to provide further guidance.

It ordered the religious institutions – MAIS, JAIS, Mufti’s department and any other related institutions – to “membimbing dan mengawal aqidah Islamiyyah plaintif” (guide and control the Plaintiff’s Islamic faith). I find it difficult to understand how repeatedly stating that I do not profess Islam and do not wish to be associated with the religion would not constitute as a rejection of Islam.

The Question the Court Did Not Answer

What strikes me, reading the judgment alongside the submissions, is this: the court resolved the case almost entirely on the basis of Section 2(b) – the birth-based definition of “Muslim” – and the principle that certainty of Islamic status cannot be displaced by doubt (yakin tidak dihilangkan dengan syak).

But my case was never built on doubt about my past. It was built on the reality of my present. I do not dispute that I was born to Muslim parents. I do not dispute that my birth certificate records me as Muslim. I am not asking the court to erase history. I am asking it to recognise what I actually profess and practise – and to update an administrative record accordingly.

Section 2(b) tells us who is classified as Muslim for administrative purposes. It does not, and cannot, tell us what a person currently believes. Article 11(1) speaks to the right to profess and practise – words that point to present conviction, not ancestral identity. If the constitutional right to profess a religion means anything, it must mean something for the person standing in front of the court declaring, under oath, that they profess a different faith.

My reply submission put it plainly: the defendant’s case uses state law to strip a right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. Under Article 75, where state law conflicts with federal law, the federal law prevails.

That argument was never addressed.

What This Means for Constitutional Supremacy

The judgment’s treatment of Article 11(1) is brief. It says the provision cannot be read “literally,” and points to Article 11(4) and Article 3(1) as limiting its scope – implying that because Islam is the religion of the Federation, a person recorded as Muslim cannot simply invoke Article 11(1) to exit that status.

That reasoning sits uneasily with Che Omar bin Che Soh v Public Prosecutor [1988] 2 MLJ 55, where the Federal Court held that Article 3(1) does not mean Islamic law pervades every aspect of the law or overrides the other provisions of the Constitution. Article 3(1) operates within the constitutional framework – it does not stand above it.

Article 11(4) permits state law to restrict the propagation of other religions to persons professing Islam. It governs external conduct, it says nothing about the internal conviction of the person who no longer professes Islam themselves. Reading it as an override of Article 11(1) would mean the Constitution grants a fundamental right to every person, then silently withdraws it from the majority. That is not what the text says.

And above all of this sits Article 4(1): the Constitution is the supreme law. Any law inconsistent with it is void to the extent of the inconsistency.

If a person declares under oath that they profess a different faith, produces a baptism certificate, calls three witnesses, and goes through eight years of proceedings – and the court’s response is that their Islamic status remains valid and they need further guidance – the question that follows is a constitutional one, not just a personal one.

Is this the administration of justice? Or is it the use of law to compel belief?

Faith is among the most personal things a human being carries. To have a legal process direct you to return to a belief you have never genuinely held, and to be told after eight years that you still do not understand enough – that produces something beyond frustration. It raises a question about what the law is actually doing.

I hold on to the words of His Royal Highness Sultan Nazrin Shah that every Malaysian – regardless of faith and background – deserves to feel safe, respected, and included (Click Link here). These are not the words of a distant ideal. They are the words of a Malaysian Islamic Ruler who champions human dignity.

I leave it to the reader to consider whether what I have described reflects that vision.