Deep in the interior of northern Perak, past the road that winds around Tasik Temengor, are villages that most Malaysians will never see. Emma was born in one of them. Her parents were not Muslim. Most of her community had never been Muslim, only a few who had, for their own reasons, converted to Islam. She grew up following the beliefs and adat (customs) of the Orang Asli community she belonged to, as her family had done for generations.

Registration in the interior has always been uneven, and Emma had not yet been issued an identity card. In the mid 2000s, some men came into the village one day, saying they were from the National Registration Department and offering to register those still without identity cards. It seemed a good thing. Emma gave her name. So did others – Fadil, Rosidah, Siti among many others – who were in the same boat as her.

About a month later, another group came, together with the men who had come a month before. They were said to be from the religious authorities. They took photographs. Some of the women were asked to cover their heads before the picture was taken. No one explained why. No one asked whether the women had a faith in which the head was covered.

A month after that, the cards arrived. Emma looked at hers. Her name was there, more or less. In the bottom right corner was a small word she did not, at the time, know how to weigh: Islam.

One of the men who received his identity card saw that a new syllable had been placed in front of his name. He was now Mohd Fadil. He had never been Mohd anything. But there it was, printed on the card he would carry for the rest of his life.

The small word at the corner

For a long time, the cards stayed in their pockets, purses and wallets, and life carried on. Emma continued in her indigenous belief. So did Fadil, and Rosidah, Rozita, and Siti, each in their own belief. None of them ever stepped inside a mosque. None of them prayed the Muslim prayers. None of them fasted in Ramadan. Their weddings, their funerals, their household rituals were as they had always been, in a faith that was not Islam.

The problem began quietly, in the way such problems do. A young person in the community wanted to marry someone who was not Muslim, and the paperwork stopped him. Another wanted to study in a religious institution of a different faith, and the form would not allow it. Someone had to worry, aloud, about where a parent might be buried. Only then did the small word in the corner of the card begin to grow.

Between counters

One day, they went to the Registration Department to get the religious status changed from Islam to to the belief they actually held. They were told to obtain an order from the Syariah Court. They went to the Syariah Court and told them they were never Muslims. They were told to return to the Registration Department. So, they went back. Same answer. They went again. Same again. In the end, they were told: you will need a Syariah Lawyer to help you.

Six of them – Emma, Fadil, Rosidah, and Siti among them – went together to a Syariah law firm that would act for them. The professional fee was four thousand ringgit each. For six, that came to twenty-four thousand ringgit, which had to be paid up front, before the first hearing.

Emma had never held four thousand ringgit in her hand at once. Neither had the others. They live where wage work is scarce and irregular, where a household’s income comes from the sale of produce and catch from their village. But they did what they had to do. The community pooled what it had. A church helped. Other NGOs helped. Word went out that six villagers had been made Muslim on paper without their consent, and that they needed help to put the record straight.

The money came in. Each of the six then signed a statutory declaration, sworn under the Statutory Declarations Act 1960, setting out that they had never been Muslim and had never professed Islam. Six declarations. Six almost identical stories. Six Syariah Court files were opened at Gerik in 2021 – Emma’s, and those of five neighbours who had walked the same road to the same counter and been sent to the same place.

Asked to file in the Civil Court

After roughly two years of Syariah Court proceedings, their Syariah lawyer told them that the matter actually belonged in the civil courts after all. They were to withdraw the Syariah application and refile. They followed the instruction, because they had no other course. The twenty-four thousand ringgit was gone. The civil cases were filed, and now drift from one postponement to the next. Their lawyer often does not answer their calls. They have never been given copies of what has been filed in their names. They have been told only when to appear at the civil court, on the few occasions it has been listed.

Other lawyers, on hearing the position, have suggested they engage someone new. But another lawyer means another set of fees. And so they wait – Emma and the rest – for a system that has never quite got round to hearing them.

They then approached the Islamic Religious Council in Ipoh, since the National Registration Department’s website states that either a Syariah Court order or a verification from the Religious Council would suffice as supporting documents in an application to change one’s religion of record from Islam to another religion.

At the Council, they were told something else: that they needed a further verification from their head of village, the Tok Batin. When they approached the Tok Batin, he was reluctant, and to this day the matter remains unresolved.

Questions ought to be answered

If the officers acting in the state’s name entered a village and altered a person’s religion on the register without her full knowledge or consent, whose duty is it to put the record straight? Emma’s? Fadil’s? The community’s? Or the state that made the entry?

What kind of legal system requires the wronged party to fund the correction of a wrong she did not cause, and to keep funding it as the same wrong is passed between one court and another?

If the Registration Department will not amend the entry without a court order, and the Syariah Court sends the applicant back to the Registration Department, and the civil court is where the matter is ultimately said to belong, then in what sense is the procedure clear enough to be followed by an ordinary person? In what sense is it clear enough to be called a procedure at all?

When six members of a single community, whose fees together came to twenty-four thousand ringgit paid up front, cannot reach a determination after four years, what does that tell us about the practical reach of the courts to those who most need the protection of their constitutional right to freedom of religion?

And what does it say about our fairness – the fairness that the Federal Constitution assumes – that indigenous families, wronged by an act of the state in their own villages, are the ones asked to prove, at their own cost and over years of their lives, that they are who they have always been?

Emma is not asking for anything remarkable. Neither are the rest. They are asking for the small word in the corner of the card in their pocket to say who they actually are.

Where, in all this, is the justice they are owed?