Surina was born and raised in Sarawak as a Christian. At 18, she fell in love with a Muslim man, converted to Islam shortly after, and within a month they were married. By her own account, the conversion was solely for the purpose of the marriage; she had no desire to embrace Islam as a matter of belief or practice. Her husband at the time did not object to her continuing to worship and remain part of her church. Towards the end of 2009, they had a daughter.

Not long after, Surina found herself a single mother. Her husband left her and their child, and has not returned since. She finalised the divorce a few years later, once it became clear he was not coming back. Surina raised her daughter in her Christian faith, as any mother in her position would.

What is striking is that although her ex-husband disappeared from their lives, his family (Muslims) – his parents and siblings – have stayed in touch, checking on Surina and her daughter’s wellbeing and showing kindness to this day. They have never forced Islam upon them. They knew she was a Christian all along and respected her profession of faith, even as she raised her daughter in the same faith. It is precisely this kind of relationship that gives me hope for Malaysia: communities and even families of different faiths coming together, setting aside religious difference for the sake of unity, harmony, and peace.

Issues with the religious status

For a long time, Surina did not fully understand the extent to which her recorded status as a Muslim would shape her life and her children’s lives. That reality only began to reveal itself in stages, and the first of those stages came at her daughter’s school.

When her daughter was enrolled in a national school, the school sought to place her in Islamic religious classes and assess her in them. When Surina explained that they practised a different faith, she was told her daughter’s religion would first have to be corrected on her identification document (MyKid). The school, to its credit, did not compel her daughter to actively participate in the Islamic classes, but the subject nonetheless had to remain assigned to her on the school’s records until Surina could change the status at the National Registration Department. She then began looking into how to change the religious status recorded on both her own and her daughter’s NRIC.

In 2017, she engaged a civil lawyer. On their advice, she first attended three counselling sessions at the Jabatan Agama Islam Sarawak (JAIS). What was described to her as counselling turned out to feel more like an attempt to talk her out of her decision. She recalls being told, more than once, to teruskan hidup – to simply carry on with her life – without changing her religious status. She was also offered employment, should she need it. The impression she came away with was unmistakable: the sessions were designed to persuade her to remain where she was on paper.

Only after completing those sessions did her matter proceed to the civil court. At the time, the recent decision in Azmi bin Mohamad Azam @ Roneey v Director of Jabatan Agama Islam Sarawak & Ors [2017] 9 MLJ 541 had upheld the constitutional right of an adult to renounce Islam. Shortly thereafter, however, she was advised to withdraw her case in light of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Jenny bt Peter v Director of Jabatan Agama Islam Sarawak [2017] 1 MLJ 340, which held that matters of this kind, while grounded in the constitutional right to religious freedom, must be brought before the Syariah Court.

Surina then sought a Syariah lawyer. That route quickly proved financially impossible. She was quoted a minimum of RM15,000 for the matter, with no ceiling and no guarantee that her application would succeed. Having already spent a few thousand ringgit on the earlier civil proceedings, she was not prepared to spend more only to return to square one. She continued searching for someone she could afford, and in 2024 she finally engaged a Syariah lawyer at a lower rate, paying an initial RM1,000 to open a file. After repeated postponements, she discovered that her case had never been filed at all.

In 2025, Surina learned of a person who had represented themselves in a similar matter before the Syariah High Court of Kuching. Encouraged, she looked up the relevant forms, prepared the documents, and filed her own case in October 2025. At the case mention, the judge dismissed the matter and told her, in open court, that if she wished to proceed she would have to refile with a Syariah lawyer. On 15 January 2026, she received a letter from the Sarawak State Attorney-General’s Chambers enclosing the court order dated 9 January 2026, which formally dismissed and struck out her Summons and Statement of Claim, while giving her liberty to refile. The cost is the main factor hindering her.

Where Surina stands today

Surina is still searching for a way forward. In the meantime, the consequences of her unchanged status reach into nearly every part of her life – and now, into her children’s lives as well.

Her daughter’s position at school remains exactly where it began, because the underlying document has not been corrected and the process to correct it has proved, at every turn, so difficult to complete. The status of both her children is, in effect, hostage to hers. Until she can change her own record, neither of theirs can move.

She cannot practise her faith with ease. So long as her records list her as Muslim, she is presumed to be Muslim in the eyes of the state and its religious authorities – and will remain so until she obtains a Syariah Court order and has the change reflected at the National Registration Department. Under Sarawak’s syariah criminal law, any person who worships nature, or performs any act showing worship or reverence towards any person, animal, place, or thing in a manner contrary to Islamic law, is guilty of an offence. On paper, Surina – a practising Christian – commits that offence every time she worships. When JAIS officers told her to teruskan hidup and leave her status untouched, were they inviting her to live in ongoing breach of the very laws they administer? Or do those laws simply cease to matter when it suits the authority to look the other way?

A few years ago, Surina remarried, according to the customs and rites of her faith, in a ceremony recognised by her church and her community. That marriage cannot be legalised under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, because the Act does not apply to Muslims – and Malaysian law makes no provision for a marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim. So long as her records remain unchanged, her marriage exists before her church and her God, but not in the eyes of the state.

She has since had a child with her husband. His name cannot be entered on the child’s birth certificate, because the marriage is not legally recognised. And because her own status remains recorded as Muslim, the child’s religion has been automatically registered as Islam – a religion neither parent professes, and neither parent chose for the child. The consequences of a paper status Surina does not accept have now passed to a second generation, despite every attempt she has made to change it.

This is what it means for a process to be attritional. It is not merely difficult. It is opaque in its requirements, obstructive in its structure, and prolonged in its operation – and at every stage it produces further deprivation of a fundamental liberty the Constitution is supposed to guarantee. Each year that passes without resolution is another year in which Surina, her marriage, and now both of her children, live under a set of legal fictions none of them chose.

And here is the harder question underneath all of it. If a citizen cannot afford the lawyer, the filings, and the years of process that the state has erected between her and the exercise of her constitutional right, does she still have that right at all? Or does it mean, quietly but unmistakably, that a fundamental liberty guaranteed by the Federal Constitution has been placed on a shelf she cannot reach? A right that depends on the size of one’s savings is, in practice, a right rationed by wealth. And a justice system that operates that way is not a justice system for everyone – it is a justice system for those who can afford it.