Part 4 of 4 – The Distinction, and What Falls on Each Side

Part 3 ended with Rosliza and the distinction it drew: a person who never was a Muslim goes to the civil courts; a person who was a Muslim and seeks to leave goes to the Syariah court.¹

Part 4 follows the cases decided since, in the order they were decided. A pattern emerges. Where a person was never converted and had no parent who counted as a Muslim at the time of his or her birth, the civil courts have corrected the record, sometimes without difficulty. Where there is something more, the road leads to the Syariah court. That something more may be a registered conversion, or a parent who counts as a Muslim under State law. Those who took that road and then returned to the civil courts found that the civil courts would not review what had happened there.

October 2021 and April 2022: Zulkifli Adirin and Satiah – The Identity Card Is Not the Religion

These two decisions came from the High Court in Kota Kinabalu, both before Judicial Commissioner Leonard David Shim.²

In Zulkifli Adirin & Ors v Director, National Registration Department, Sabah, three Kadazandusun siblings had birth certificates that recorded no religion for them or for their parents. When their father took them to apply for identity cards at 12, the National Registration Department told them that, because they were born out of wedlock, they had to follow their mother’s religion, and its records showed her as a Muslim. On the application forms for two of the children, the father had ticked “other” and written “none” in the religion section. Their cards were issued showing “Islam” regardless. For the third child, the form recorded that the father had agreed to the religion following the mother’s.³

The Department relied on a Sabah registration provision, but the Court held that it deals only with how a child’s surname is recorded. It says nothing about religion.⁴ The Department had no power to choose a child’s religion; under Article 12(4) that power lies with the parent.⁵ Following Maqsood Ahmad, an identity card is not conclusive evidence of religion, and because the Department was the one asserting that the applicants were Muslims, the burden of proving it lay on the Department. It had produced nothing from the Sabah religious authorities to show that the applicants had ever been Muslims.⁶

On reaching majority age, the Court said, the applicants had “the constitutional right to religious freedom to correct the religious status as stated in their MyKad”.⁷ No Syariah court order was required.⁸

Satiah bt Simbunar v Director, National Registration Department, Sabah followed the next year. Satiah was born to Dusun parents who held no religion. According to her affidavit, she went back to the Department as a girl to correct a misspelt surname, and the new card read “Islam”. The officer explained that it was because her mother had been wearing a tudung. The Department said its records showed no error in her name. Her mother had converted to Islam on remarrying, when Satiah was eleven, and swore an affidavit denying that Satiah had ever converted.⁹

As an adult, Satiah was baptised and married in church. The Department’s position was that the marriage could not be registered with it because she was a Muslim, and when she was expecting her first child, she was told that her daughter’s religion would follow her own if the birth were registered.¹⁰

The Court held that conversion in Sabah requires the person to utter the Affirmation of Faith, in reasonably intelligible Arabic and of her own free will. There was no evidence of that, and no registration as a convert.¹¹ The Department argued that her mother had consented to the entry by putting her thumbprint on the identity card application; the mother, who could not read, said the officer had filled in the form and taken her thumbprint. The Court held that it made no difference: a thumbprint on the form “does not have the legal effect of converting a person to Islam”. Nor was the tudung in her photograph “a determinating factor”.¹²

The Court then added an alternative ground that went further than Rosliza. Even if Satiah had become a Muslim as a child by following her mother, it held, she had the right on reaching adulthood to choose her own religion and to have the record corrected:

“Even if the Plaintiff had automatically followed her mother’s religion of Islam when she was a minor as contended by the Defendant, upon reaching the age of majority, the Plaintiff has the right accorded under Article 11 and Article 12(4) … to decide on the religion of her choice and to apply to delete or correct the religion ascribed to her by the NRD in her MyKad.” ¹³

On that reasoning, adult choice would decide the matter even for a person who became a Muslim in childhood, the very category Rosliza had left to the Syariah courts.

October 2023: Siti Nur Ain – The Same Question, a Different State

In Siti Nur Ain bt Sulaiman lwn Majlis Ugama Islam dan Adat Resam Melayu Pahang dan satu lagi, decided by High Court Judge Zainal Azman Ab Aziz in Kuantan, the facts were close to Satiah‘s. The result was the opposite.¹⁴

The plaintiff was a Jakun Orang Asli woman, born out of wedlock in 1993. Her mother converted to Islam when she was two, and the Pahang register of converts recorded the daughter, too, under the name Siti Nur Ain binti Sulaiman. The Court found that the name had been given by the mother; the mother’s evidence that she had never consented to her daughter’s conversion was rejected as unsupported. The plaintiff sought a declaration that she was not a Muslim.¹⁵

The Court held that she was one. Under the Pahang Enactment, the child of a convert converts with the parent where custody has been given to that parent. The Court found custody lay with the mother under the Islamic family law enactment, and relied on a gazetted Pahang fatwa of 2013 under which a minor follows the converting parent. Indira Gandhi was held irrelevant because her father was a Muslim. Her claim was therefore in substance a renunciation, for the Syariah court.¹⁶

Three features of the judgment are difficult to reconcile with the authorities.

The first: the Pahang provision makes a convert’s child a Muslim only where a court other than the Syariah Court has placed the child in the convert’s custody. The judgment identifies no such order. It relies instead on the fact that her mother had always cared for her; on a 2005 Islamic family law provision giving the mother custody of a child born out of wedlock, although her mother was not a Muslim when she was born; and on a 2013 fatwa, to decide the effect of a conversion in 1995. Each was applied to a child whose Muslim status was the very question.¹⁷

The second: It relies on the fact that her father was a Muslim. But her parents were not married, and Rosliza held that in that situation the father’s religion cannot be passed to the child.¹⁸

The third: It states that the plaintiff’s claim is an ab initio case, because there was no proof that she was originally a Muslim; five paragraphs later it finds that she was a Muslim from the beginning. The two statements cannot both be right.¹⁹

Set beside Satiah, the case shows two courts reaching opposite conclusions on closely similar facts. A mother’s conversion during her daughter’s minority did not make the daughter a Muslim in Sabah. In Pahang it did.

December 2023: Adam Lee – The Review That Could Not Be Heard

Adam Lee Shiong Lim v Mahkamah Rayuan Syariah Wilayah Persekutuan & Ors was decided by High Court Judge Wan Ahmad Farid on 11 December 2023.²⁰

The applicant had converted to Islam in order to marry. The marriage ended. He applied to the Kuala Lumpur Syariah High Court for a declaration that he was no longer a Muslim, deposing that his faith lay in Christianity. That court dismissed his claim, and allowed the religious council’s counterclaim requiring him to attend akidah counselling, counselling in the Islamic articles of faith. The Syariah Court of Appeal affirmed, finding that his claim rested on his own word, unsupported by witnesses, and that proof of religious belief required “sufficient evidence”.²¹

He then sought judicial review in the civil High Court. His counsel argued that the Syariah courts had no jurisdiction to decide the matter at all: the Federal Territories Act lists the matters within their civil jurisdiction, and leaving Islam is not among them, and Soon Singh, in finding that jurisdiction by implication, had supplied a gap only the legislature could fill. Counsel pointed out that the Syariah Court of Appeal had said as much itself: its power to decide whether a person is a Muslim, it said, did not mean that it had power “to allow a person to leave Islam”. Counsel also argued that the Syariah courts had wrongly required witnesses to corroborate the applicant’s own statement of his faith, and that the counselling order infringed his rights to personal liberty (Article 5), to equality before the law (Article 8) and to freedom of religion (Article 11), and the guarantee that no person shall be required to receive instruction in a religion other than his own (Article 12(3)).²²

The judge found the decisions deficient; in his word, “wanting”. The applicant had stated in his affidavit and in his Syariah pleadings that he believed in Christianity and the Holy Trinity. The Syariah Court of Appeal had dismissed that as his own word, unsupported by witnesses. But under the Syariah Court Evidence (Federal Territories) Act 1997, a person’s own admission, an iqrar, is admissible evidence, and the judge said the applicant’s testimony was “evidence like any other”. He said he could not understand what the Syariah Court of Appeal meant by “sufficient evidence” without an explanation of what sufficiency required.²³

He nonetheless dismissed the application. He held himself bound by the Court of Appeal’s majority decision in Dahlia Dhaima, a case then awaiting the Federal Court and discussed below, that the civil courts have no power of judicial review over the Syariah courts on renunciation. He concluded that such decisions are:

“pure and simple non-justiciable by the Civil Courts, notwithstanding the fact that such decisions are tainted with anisminic error or Wednesbury unreasonableness.” ²⁴

An Anisminic error is one that takes a decision outside the decision-maker’s jurisdiction; Wednesbury unreasonableness describes a decision so unreasonable that no reasonable decision-maker could have reached it.²⁵ The two phrases answered counsel’s two lines of argument. Even if the Syariah courts had acted without jurisdiction, and even if their treatment of the evidence was irrational, the civil court would not intervene.

December 2023 to November 2024: Shamir Izak – Leave Granted, Then Lost

Ten days later, a different High Court judge took a different view at the leave stage.

Shamir Izak was born a Christian in 1969 and converted to Islam in 1993 in order to marry. He said he continued to practise Christianity throughout. The marriage ended in divorce in 2001, and in 2014 he applied to the Shah Alam Syariah High Court for a declaration that he was no longer a Muslim. On the religious council’s application, the court ordered akidah counselling at least twice a month for a minimum of six months, and he attended twelve sessions.²⁶

In October 2019 the Syariah High Court dismissed his application and directed him to attend further classes in the Islamic faith. It held that it was unnecessary to decide whether he practised or professed Islam, because his original conversion was valid. He filed his appeal in time, but served the notice on the religious council three days late, at a time when he had no lawyer. In December 2022 the Syariah Court of Appeal refused to extend time and dismissed the appeal without hearing its merits.²⁷

In the civil courts, Shamir sought a declaration that the Syariah Court of Appeal’s decision had “denied the Applicant his right to freedom of religion under Article 11(1)”.²⁸ In Shamir Izak Sinnappan bin Abdullah v Majlis Agama Islam Selangor & Ors, High Court Judge Shahnaz Sulaiman granted leave for judicial review on 21 December 2023, over the Attorney General’s objection under Article 121(1A). The issue, she held, concerned the applicant’s right under the Federal Constitution and could not be called frivolous.²⁹ The Attorney General appealed. On 19 July 2024 the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, setting aside the grant of leave, and on 28 November 2024 the Federal Court unanimously refused Shamir leave to appeal further.³⁰ The case ended without any court deciding whether he was entitled to the declaration he sought.

The chronology is worth setting out. Shamir applied to the Syariah High Court in 2014. The application was decided some five years later, in October 2019, without any finding on whether he professed Islam. His appeal ended in December 2022, on a three-day delay in service. The civil proceedings then ran from March 2023 to November 2024. Ten years after he first applied, no court, Syariah or civil, had decided whether he professes Islam. That is the question on which both his right under Article 11(1) and the Syariah court’s own jurisdiction depend.³¹

2023–2024: Two Further Refusals, Reported in the Press

Two further cases, so far known only from press reports, followed the same course.

In the first, a woman whose father had converted to Islam in order to marry her mother, and who had been raised without practising Islam, applied to the Kuala Lumpur Syariah High Court in 2018 for a declaration that she was no longer a Muslim. She was ordered to attend counselling. In July 2020 her application was dismissed and she was ordered to attend repentance classes; her appeal was dismissed in December 2021.³² The civil High Court refused her leave for judicial review in June 2022. In August 2023 the Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed her appeal, reportedly holding that the civil and Syariah courts are “two separate legal systems, and the Shariah Court is not an inferior tribunal subject to judicial review”.³³ On 5 February 2024 the Federal Court dismissed her further appeal by a majority. One of the three judges, Federal Court Judge Mary Lim, dissented. She would dissent again three months later, in Dahlia Dhaima, discussed next.³⁴

In the second, a woman born and baptised a Christian, who had converted in 1995 in order to marry and divorced in 2013, petitioned the Selangor Syariah High Court in 2016. After twelve counselling sessions her petition was dismissed in July 2020, with a further sixty days of counselling ordered, and her appeal failed in January 2023. In June 2023 the High Court in Penang refused her leave for judicial review, holding that Article 121(1A) gave the Syariah courts exclusive authority.³⁵

In both cases the civil courts refused leave: the stage at which a court decides only whether a case deserves to be heard at all.

May 2024: Dahlia Dhaima – Invalidity Is Not Enough

Between those two stages of Shamir, the Federal Court returned to the Rosliza distinction itself. Dahlia Dhaima Abdullah v Majlis Agama Islam Selangor and another appeal was decided on 3 May 2024.³⁶

The appellant was born in 1986 to a Hindu father and a Buddhist mother. In May 1991, when she was four, her mother converted and converted her too, without her father’s knowledge. The Selangor enactment then in force provided that no person who had not attained puberty should be converted.³⁷ In 2013 she applied to the Kuala Lumpur Syariah High Court for a declaration that she was no longer a Muslim. At the time, Lina Joy was understood to leave such questions to the Syariah courts.³⁸ She failed there in 2017 and on appeal in January 2021. After Rosliza, she applied to the civil High Court on the footing that her conversion had been invalid and that she had never been a Muslim. The High Court agreed in December 2021. The Court of Appeal reversed by a majority.³⁹

The Federal Court dismissed her appeals by a majority. President of the Court of Appeal Abang Iskandar held that an invalid conversion does not by itself show that a person was never a Muslim. The Rosliza inquiry extends beyond the moment of conversion to the whole of a person’s life until the suit is filed.⁴⁰ The Syariah High Court had found, partly from her own evidence under cross-examination, that she was raised as a Muslim by her mother and stepfather, and the majority relied on that finding.⁴¹ She and her mother said she had practised Hinduism throughout.⁴² Her own application to the Syariah court was taken as showing her belief at that time, and the majority held that she had “correctly submitted to the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court”.⁴³ Federal Court Judge Abu Bakar Jais, concurring, added that a civil court cannot substitute its decision for that of the Syariah courts.⁴⁴ An application for review of the decision was dismissed in January 2025.⁴⁵

Mary Lim FCJ again dissented. Her judgment is the clearest recent statement of the alternative position at apex level. It opens with the premise that:

“the written promises within the Federal Constitution must be carefully and responsibly discerned and honoured. Otherwise, the words used will have no meaning or value, even less than of the paper written on.” ⁴⁶

Dahlia’s earlier application to the Syariah court, she held, could not be held against her. Dahlia had explained that she took that route because it was the law as it then stood, following Lina Joy; until Indira Gandhi and Rosliza, the law on which court decides these questions had been unclear. To hold her reasons against her “would amount to deprivation of her only recourse and access to justice”.⁴⁷

Nor could the Syariah decisions settle her status. In her view, a Syariah court asked to let a person leave Islam decides only that application. Whether the person was ever a Muslim is a question outside its jurisdiction. The Syariah courts’ refusal of Dahlia’s application therefore did not prevent the civil courts from deciding whether she had ever been a Muslim. After Indira Gandhi and Rosliza, that was a question only the civil courts could decide. ⁴⁸

She added that the Syariah courts Dahlia had gone to were those of the Federal Territory, and they had applied the Federal Territory’s own definition of a Muslim. Whether her conversion in Selangor was valid depended on Selangor’s law, which, she held, those courts had no power to “interpret, determine or even apply”.⁴⁹

The point has practical weight. If questions of conversion must go to the Syariah courts, and each State’s Syariah courts can apply only that State’s law, a person converted in one State and living in another may find no Syariah court able to hear them. Sarawak’s 2018 procedure, for instance, does not apply to a person who converted outside Sarawak.⁵⁰

On the conversion itself, she held it invalid: the Selangor enactment then in force prohibited the conversion of a child who had not reached puberty, and Dahlia had never uttered the affirmation of faith. Because the conversion was invalid, and her rights under Article 11 were engaged, denying her a remedy “would be a compromise of the principle of ubi jus ibi remedium [where there is a right, there must be a remedy] and the failure of this court to recognise its own jurisdiction.” ⁵¹

July 2025: Brandon Yeoh – A Status That Depends on Someone Else

In Brandon Yeoh Phee Liang lwn Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara, Malaysia, Judicial Commissioner Rozi Bainon dismissed the claim in the Shah Alam High Court on 23 July 2025. Written grounds followed on 5 September.⁵²

The defendant was the National Registration Department, which issues identity cards and also registers non-Muslim marriages. Its own records showed the plaintiff as a Buddhist, and he had held a non-Muslim identity card since the age of twelve. He had been raised by his Buddhist father. He needed a declaration that he was, and always had been, a non-Muslim only because the Department had refused to register his temple marriage, pending “court confirmation” of his religious status. His parents had never married, and the Department’s records showed his mother as a Muslim from birth. She had been baptised as a child and, a week after he was born, made a statutory declaration that she had embraced Christianity and no longer practised Islam. She had never obtained a Syariah order.⁵³

The Court held that his status depended on his mother’s, and that hers was a matter for the Syariah court. Only once that court had finally determined his mother’s religious status could his own be settled. His position turned on a proceeding that another person had never brought.⁵⁴

September 2025: Shivanish – The Box Ticked Twice

In Shivanish v Majlis Agama Islam dan Adat Melayu Perak & Anor, decided in the Ipoh High Court by High Court Judge Bhupindar Singh Gurcharan Singh Preet on 23 September 2025, the claim succeeded.⁵⁵

The plaintiff was born in 1999 to a Hindu mother and a father said to have converted to Islam years earlier to marry another woman. His parents had gone through a Hindu ceremony at an Ipoh temple in 1977, which could not be valid because the father was a Muslim; the defendants did not dispute that there was no valid marriage. His father left on the day he was born, and his birth was registered under the provision for children born out of wedlock. His birth certificate recorded both him and his mother as Hindu. He was raised a Hindu by his mother and, after her death in 2007, by his aunt. When he applied for an identity card at 12, the religion section of the form was marked twice, “Hindu” and “Islam”. He said he had ticked “Hindu” and the officer had then ticked “Islam” because his father was a Muslim. The Perak religious council confirmed that it had no record that either he or his father had ever become a Muslim. As an adult he wished to marry a Hindu woman but could not, because the National Registration Department’s records showed him as a Muslim, and in 2021 it refused to remove the entry.⁵⁶

The Court found that the two ticks supported his account: had he professed Islam, there would have been only one. Following Rosliza, which had adopted the Court of Appeal’s view in Maqsood, the identity card was not conclusive evidence of his religion. Applying Rosliza’s reading of the rule on paternity, a father who is not married to the mother cannot be treated as a “parent” for the purpose of the State definition of a Muslim. The plaintiff was declared not to be a person professing Islam.⁵⁷

October 2025: Nivethah – Two Generations Back

In Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara, Malaysia v Nivethah a/p Thamayandiran & Anor, decided on 23 October 2025 by Court of Appeal Judges Mohd Nazlan, Ahmad Fairuz and Lim Hock Leng, two sisters born out of wedlock and raised as Hindus had won declarations in the High Court that they were, and had always been, Hindu. The Court of Appeal reversed.⁵⁸

The reasoning ran through two generations. The Selangor definition makes a person a Muslim if either parent was a Muslim at the time of the person’s birth. Under s 111 of the State’s Islamic family law enactment, a child born out of wedlock has no father in law; lineage runs through the mother alone. Their grandmother was a Muslim. Their mother was born out of wedlock to her and a Hindu man, so their mother was a Muslim at birth. The sisters were also born out of wedlock, to a Hindu father. What mattered was their mother, and on that footing they too were Muslims from birth.⁵⁹

That their mother had not met her own biological parents until recently, and had been raised a Hindu, was “entirely irrelevant”. Their claim to have never been Muslims therefore had to be treated as a claim to be no longer Muslims.⁶⁰

The sisters relied on Article 11, that they had always professed Hinduism and wished to continue doing so. The Court held that this, “even if true”, did not change their legal identity as Muslims, and that evidence of what they in fact professed was irrelevant. Their remedy, if any, was to ask the Syariah court to declare that they were no longer Muslims.⁶¹

The rule that had freed Rosliza could not help the sisters: it cuts the link only to a father, and here the Muslim parent was the mother.⁶²

2024–2026: Other Reported Decisions

Other decisions in this period, known so far only from press reports, point the same way as Zulkifli, Satiah and Shivanish.

In August 2024. The High Court in Kota Kinabalu reportedly declared that Rieno Glant Oleant George, born in 1995 to Christian parents, was not and never had been a Muslim, and ordered “Islam” removed from his identity card. His mother had converted on remarrying in 1998, when he was nearly three, but she never converted him, and he was raised a Christian by his grandmother. As in Satiah, a mother’s conversion did not carry her child with her.⁶³

In January 2026. The same court reportedly allowed Abdul Manap Bakusai and his three children, who had always practised Christianity, to have their identity cards corrected, finding that the National Registration Department had recorded their religion without factual or legal basis.⁶⁴

Later in January 2026. The High Court declared that Stanley Pinto, 76, born in 1949 out of wedlock to a mother who never converted, had professed the Christian faith throughout his life. He complained that the National Registration Department had breached his right under Article 11(1) when, in 2002, it issued him an identity card bearing the word “Islam”. He also sought, and was granted, a declaration that he be given a Christian burial according to Roman Catholic rites. The question of burial, which brought Dalip Kaur to court in 1991, returned thirty-five years later, this time raised in advance by the person concerned.⁶⁵

May 2026: Nurisah – What a Claimant Must Now Show

In Nurisah bt Abdullah v Majlis Agama Islam Melaka & Ors, decided in the Melaka High Court by Judicial Commissioner Raja Segaran S Krishnan on 15 May 2026, the Court accepted jurisdiction over a genuine ab initio claim. It then set out what a claimant in her position must show.⁶⁶

The plaintiff was born in 1997. Her mother converted to Islam in 2005, and in 2009, when the plaintiff was about eleven, she too was registered as a convert to Islam, on her mother’s consent alone and, she said, without her father’s knowledge. Her name was changed to Nurisah binti Abdullah. Her mother later swore that she had physically compelled her to take part. The Court did not accept this, preferring the declaration her mother had made at the time of the conversion, which said it was voluntary.⁶⁷

The Court held that Indira Gandhi, which requires the consent of both parents, operates only for conversions registered after 2018.⁶⁸ Because a child cannot choose her own religion, the Court reasoned that her own profession or non-profession could be tested only after she turned 18. What it looked for in that period was an affirmative act cognisable in law. Examples were:

• an application to amend the identity card;
• a statutory declaration of non-Muslim identity;
• a complaint to the Registrar of Muallafs;
• proceedings brought at the earliest practicable opportunity.⁶⁹

The Court accepted her evidence that she had lived as a Hindu. But sustained practice of another religion, it held, “goes to practice, not to profession”. Across the ten years between her eighteenth birthday and the filing of her claim, she had taken no affirmative act. The claim failed.⁷⁰

Two further points in the judgment matter. It is not consistent on the point that decided the case: it first said that her years under a registered Muslim identity did not, of themselves, amount to profession, and later held that those same years were sufficient on their own.⁷¹ And even had she succeeded, the Court said, the National Registration Department could still, under Lina Joy, require confirmation from the Islamic authority before removing “Islam” from her records. Rosliza, however, had treated Lina Joy as a renunciation case. In an ab initio case, where the person was never within the Syariah authorities’ jurisdiction, Roneey shows the Department complying with the civil court’s order alone.⁷²

July 2026: Jan Sarah – Rosliza Applied

Eight weeks later, in Jan Sarah bt Jainudin v Ketua Pengarah Pendaftaran Negara Malaysia & Ors, Judicial Commissioner Dayang Ellyn Narisa Abang Ahmad of the Kota Kinabalu High Court applied Rosliza as it was written.⁷³

The plaintiff was born in 1992 to a Roman Catholic mother and a Muslim father who were never shown to have married. At 12 her identity card recorded “Islam”, an entry she said was typed in by counter staff. She was baptised in 2012. When her son was born in 2024, the National Registration Department added “bin Abdullah” to his name and recorded him as a Muslim.⁷⁴

She sought declarations that she was born out of wedlock to a Roman Catholic mother; that “parents” in the Sabah definition of a Muslim does not include the father of a child born out of wedlock; and that the Syariah courts in Sabah have no jurisdiction over her or her son.⁷⁵

The Court held that the council’s suggestion that her parents had married in an unregistered village ceremony was “conjecture”, and that an administrative entry “cannot create a lawful marriage where none is proved”. Under s 111 of Sabah’s Islamic family law enactment, which is in the same terms as Selangor’s, the father’s religion could not be ascribed to her. She was not a Muslim, and her son’s registration could not stand on the premise that she was. Costs of RM8,000 were awarded against the defendants.⁷⁶

One argument in the case looks forward. The Sabah State Government submitted that its Syariah Courts Enactment 2024 gives the Syariah High Court jurisdiction to declare whether a person “is or was” a Muslim. The Court held that it had jurisdiction nonetheless.⁷⁷ But the submission shows that the line Rosliza drew between the two courts is itself being redrawn by State legislation.

What the Cases Show

The route that works, and the route that does not. Every remedy in this period went to a person who had never been converted and had no parent who counted as a Muslim under State law at the time of his or her birth. The only link to Islam was a record, or a parent who was a Muslim but whose religion the law did not pass on: a father to whom a child born out of wedlock could not be attributed, or a mother who converted only after the child was born. Every claim failed where there was something more: a registered conversion, or a parent who counted as a Muslim at birth. The first group went to the civil courts and, at first instance at least, succeeded. The second group was sent, or had already gone, to the Syariah court.

Every remedy was granted at first instance. No decision in an applicant’s favour in this period has been made or upheld by an appellate court. Three High Court decisions in an applicant’s favour were appealed, and all three were reversed: the declarations in Dahlia Dhaima and Nivethah, and the grant of leave in Shamir Izak.⁷⁸

Going to the Syariah court first did not help. Five applicants in this Part went to the Syariah court first: Adam Lee, Shamir Izak, Dahlia Dhaima and the two women discussed under “Two Further Refusals, Reported in the Press”. All five were refused there. None obtained lasting relief in the civil courts. In Dahlia Dhaima, the earlier application was held against her as evidence of what she then believed. The plaintiff in Nurisah took the opposite course. She never went to the Syariah court, or took any other legal step, until she filed her claim, and that absence was held against her.⁷⁹ The step Nurisah looked for was proceedings asserting non-Muslim status; the step Dahlia took, asking to be declared no longer a Muslim, was treated as the opposite. Taken together, the two decisions leave little room. An applicant registered as a Muslim in childhood risks her claim whether she goes to the Syariah court first or does not.

Implied jurisdiction has left the stage, but has not been answered. Soon Singh answered a problem of statutory silence. In several States that silence has since been filled. Section 61(3)(b)(x) of the Selangor Enactment confers jurisdiction to declare that a person is no longer a Muslim, and s 74(2) provides that a Muslim remains one until a Syariah court says otherwise.⁸⁰ In Nivethah the Court of Appeal grounded Syariah jurisdiction squarely in those sections; no implication was needed. Where no such provision exists, the implication is still what the jurisdiction rests on. Rosliza left open whether the Syariah courts have jurisdiction over renunciation by implication at all, where no State law confers it expressly. That question has not been answered. It has been removed from view in some places and left standing in others.

The instruments have returned, with a different function. In 1991 Dalip Kaur asked the States for clear provisions, and offered as its example a register of converts who have executed a deed poll renouncing Islam.⁸¹ The acts Nurisah now looks for are strikingly close: an application to amend the identity card, a statutory declaration, a complaint to the Registrar of Muallafs. Under the model Dalip Kaur described, such an instrument would have settled a person’s status. Under Nurisah it is evidence. Its absence is fatal, but its presence guarantees nothing, because the claim must still be brought and may still be lost on the totality. And the record now works in one direction. In Nurisah, an identity card recording Islam formed part of a statutory record the claimant had to displace. In Brandon Yeoh, an identity card recording something else settled nothing.⁸²

A Right Without a Remedy

Article 11(1) says that every person has the right to profess and practise his religion. It does not say that the right may be exercised once a court has approved it.

Across the period covered by this series, the power to decide whether a Muslim may leave Islam moved step by step. In 1957 the right sat in the Constitution. In 1999 jurisdiction over leaving Islam was found in the Syariah courts by implication, from provisions dealing only with conversion into Islam.⁸³ States then conferred that jurisdiction by statute, and Sabah now argues for more.⁸⁴ Each step was lawful on its own terms. Taken together, they moved the question of whether a person may exercise a constitutional right away from the courts established to protect it.

That transfer might be defensible if the civil courts kept the power to check how the jurisdiction is used. The cases show that, in practice, they have not.

In Adam Lee, the High Court was critical of the decision under review and still held that it was “non-justiciable … notwithstanding … anisminic error”,⁸⁵ even though the Syariah Court of Appeal had itself disclaimed any power to allow a person to leave Islam. In the ordinary law of judicial review, such a decision is a nullity, and nullities are what the supervisory jurisdiction exists to correct. Nearly six years earlier, Indira Gandhi had held that judicial review is part of the basic structure of the Constitution and cannot be taken from the civil courts, “whether by constitutional amendment, Act of Parliament or state legislation”. It had also described treating every question with an Islamic element as belonging to the Syariah courts as “unduly simplistic”.⁸⁶ Both propositions remain good law, and the second of them was not applied.

Shamir Izak shows what goes unexamined when review is refused. The Syariah High Court held that it was unnecessary to decide whether he professed Islam, because his conversion was valid. Profession is the word on which both Article 11(1) and Item 1 of the State List turn, yet it was treated as irrelevant. A three-day delay in service then ended his only appeal. The civil High Court held that a constitutional right was in issue and granted leave. That was as far as he got.⁸⁷

Three features make this more than a question of which court has jurisdiction.

The first is that the risk falls on one side only. In each case only one party has a constitutional right at stake. The religious council, the State and the National Registration Department appear to defend a legal classification and a record, not a liberty of their own. If the court errs against the applicant, a fundamental liberty is lost, sometimes for years and sometimes for good. If it errs in his favour, a record is corrected. Because the costs of error are so uneven, a legal system that takes rights seriously should examine these claims more closely, not assume at the outset that they belong in another court. That is what Indira Gandhi required: before declining jurisdiction, a civil court “should first examine or scrutinise the nature of the matter before it”.⁸⁸

The second is the nature of the forum. The question of whether a person is still bound by Islamic law is decided under the norms he says he no longer holds, in a court whose jurisdiction depends on his remaining a person professing Islam. Rosliza itself called “profess” a constitutional term, justiciable in the civil courts.⁸⁹ Yet once a case is classified as a renunciation, the civil courts do not ask what the applicant now professes. Profession, a constitutional term only they may interpret, is tested at the point of conversion and not after it.

Nivethah shows how the question of profession can be settled before it is ever asked. Under Rosliza, the question that decides jurisdiction is whether a person has ever affirmatively professed Islam. If they have not, the Syariah courts have no jurisdiction over them.

In Nivethah, that question was never reached. Selangor’s definition treats a person as a Muslim if either parent was a Muslim at the time of the person’s birth. The sisters’ grandmother was a Muslim, which made their mother a Muslim at birth, which made the sisters Muslims at birth. The State definition answered the question for them, and what the sisters actually professed was held to be irrelevant.⁹⁰

But a State definition is not the last word. The Constitution allows a State to legislate only for persons professing the religion of Islam. Under Article 4(1), any State law is void to the extent that it conflicts with the Constitution, including with Article 11(1), which gives every person the right to profess his or her own religion.

That leaves a question no court has yet decided: can a State definition make a person a Muslim who has never professed Islam, and make what that person does profess irrelevant?

The third is the absence of a remedy. If the Syariah court declines to grant the declaration, and the civil court declines to examine that refusal, no court remains in which the right can be vindicated. Richard Malanjum, then Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak, warned of exactly this in his dissent in Lina Joy: “No court or authority should be easily allowed to have implied powers to curtail rights constitutionally granted.” ⁹¹ Seventeen years later, Mary Lim FCJ invoked the same principle in Dahlia Dhaima: where there is a right, there must be a remedy.⁹²

The rule of law requires more than that decisions be made by a body with jurisdiction. It requires that a person whose fundamental liberty is affected can bring the decision before an independent court with power to correct it.

The same is true of the right’s limits. Article 11(5) subjects the right to general laws relating to public order, public health and morality, and Jamaluddin set the threshold at actions going “well beyond what can normally be regarded as professing and practising one’s religion”.⁹³ A person who asks that the public record reflect a belief he already holds does not approach that threshold. No court in these cases was asked to find that he did. A person who is not a Muslim exercises that right without a court order, whether moving to another faith or to Islam. A person of any faith who becomes a Muslim does so by uttering the affirmation of faith, which is then registered.⁹⁴ The requirement runs in one direction only.

Maqsood Ahmad described freedom of religion as absolute and non-derogable, save for the Constitution’s own express limits.⁹⁵ It is difficult to reconcile that description with the position reached in these cases. The right survives in the text. But for a person registered as a Muslim, the only route to exercising it runs through a forum whose decisions the civil courts will not review, even for error going to jurisdiction.

Whether that amounts to justice is a question each reader can answer. What is clear is that this is not what the Constitution sets out. Article 4(1) makes the Constitution the supreme law. A right that can be exercised only with the permission of a body beyond review is, in practice, subordinate to that body.

Where This Leaves Us

Five years after Rosliza, what falls on each side of its line can be stated. On the civil side are those who were never converted and had no parent whom State law counted as a Muslim at their birth; for them, the civil courts have corrected the record. On the Syariah side is everyone else: anyone with a registered conversion, including one made in childhood on one parent’s consent, and anyone with a parent who counted as a Muslim at birth, even through a grandparent.

Where the line falls in a given case has depended on which State’s law applies, on how that State defines a Muslim, and on what the claimant can prove. And the line has not stayed still. Satiah would have let an adult’s own choice decide; Siti Nur Ain and Satiah reached opposite results on similar facts; and Sabah now argues that its Syariah courts may decide whether a person “is or was” a Muslim.

One limit on all of the above should be stated plainly. This series has looked mainly at the civil courts: at where they have said the line falls, and at what they have said a person must prove to be on one side of it rather than the other. It has not examined what happens in the Syariah courts to those who are sent there. It has not looked at how those courts read the provisions under which such applications are made, what they require by way of proof, or what orders they make. That is a separate question, and it deserves its own treatment.

The framers of 1957 and 1962 recorded their understanding plainly: the position of Islam under Article 3(1) would not jeopardise the religious freedom guaranteed to every person.⁹⁶ Four State legislatures once gave that understanding statutory form through registration mechanisms. In 1991 the Supreme Court asked the others to follow.⁹⁷

What followed was not the extension of that model. In some States it was replaced by provisions of a different character. Where no such provision exists, a jurisdiction no legislature has conferred continues to operate. Neither development was compelled by the constitutional text. Both can be revisited.

Legislatures remain free to enact the registration provisions Dalip Kaur actually described. The apex court has never answered the question Rosliza left open. The civil courts have never given up their power to interpret the Constitution and the laws made under it; and Indira Gandhi holds that the power cannot be removed. And two members of the Federal Court, seventeen years apart, have written judgments explaining why the present position is difficult to sustain.⁹⁸

Article 4(1) has not changed. The Constitution remains the supreme law. What has changed is how faithfully the law beneath it has kept to what it says.

Footnotes

1. Rosliza bt Ibrahim v Kerajaan Negeri Selangor & Anor [2021] 2 MLJ 181, [2021] 3 CLJ 301 (FC) [98]–[99], [108] ↩︎
2. Zulkifli Adirin & Ors v Director, National Registration Department, Sabah [2021] MLJU 3042 (HC, 11 October 2021); Satiah bt Simbunar v Director, National Registration Department, Sabah [2022] MLJU 2466 (HC, 8 April 2022) ↩︎
3. Zulkifli (n 2) [24]–[25] ↩︎
4. ibid [26]–[32]; Registration of Births and Deaths Ordinance (Sabah Cap 123), s 10 ↩︎
5. Zulkifli (n 2) [32]; Federal Constitution, art 12(4) ↩︎
6. Zulkifli (n 2) [32], [34]–[35], citing Ketua Pegawai Penguatkuasa Agama & Ors v Maqsood Ahmad & Ors and another appeal [2021] 1 MLJ 120, [2020] 10 CLJ 748 (CA) ↩︎
7. Zulkifli (n 2) [33] ↩︎
8. ibid [41]–[42] ↩︎
9. Satiah (n 2) [2], [11], [17], [20]–[22] ↩︎
10. ibid [26] ↩︎
11. ibid [36]–[40]; Majlis Ugama Islam Negeri Sabah Enactment 2004, s 69 ↩︎
12. Satiah (n 2) [41], [43] ↩︎
13. ibid [45] ↩︎
14. Siti Nur Ain bt Sulaiman lwn Majlis Ugama Islam dan Adat Resam Melayu Pahang dan satu lagi [2023] MLJU 2432 (HC, 5 October 2023) ↩︎
15. ibid [3]–[7], [15]–[16], [27]–[31] ↩︎
16. Siti Nur Ain (n 14) [14], [17]–[25], [32]–[34], [45]; Administration of Islamic Law Enactment 1991 (Pahang), ss 2(1)(d), 103; Islamic Family Law Enactment 2005 (Pahang), s 86 ↩︎
17. Siti Nur Ain (n 14) [14]–[24]. The Pahang fatwa was gazetted on 12 September 2013: ibid [19] ↩︎
18. ibid [15], [32]; Rosliza (n 1) [64]–[65] ↩︎
19. Siti Nur Ain (n 14) [40], [45] ↩︎
20. Adam Lee Shiong Lim v Mahkamah Rayuan Syariah Wilayah Persekutuan & Ors [2024] 7 MLJ 588, [2024] 1 SHLR 1 (HC) ↩︎
21. ibid [1]–[6], [41] (“keterangan yang mencukupi”, author’s translation) ↩︎
22. Federal Constitution, arts 5, 8, 11, 12(3); Administration of Islamic Law (Federal Territories) Act 1993, s 46(2)(b); Adam Lee (n 20) [11], [15]–[32], esp [26]–[27] (the Syariah Court of Appeal’s statement; author’s translation); Soon Singh a/l Bikar Singh v Pertubuhan Kebajikan Islam Malaysia (PERKIM) Kedah & Anor [1999] 1 MLJ 489 (FC) ↩︎
23. Adam Lee (n 20) [41]–[42]; Syariah Court Evidence (Federal Territories) Act 1997, s 17 ↩︎
24. Adam Lee (n 20) [39]–[40], [43]–[45], following Majlis Agama Islam Selangor v Dahlia Dhaima bt Abdullah and another appeal [2023] 2 MLJ 897 (CA) ↩︎
25. Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission [1969] 2 AC 147 (HL); Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223 (CA) ↩︎
26. Shamir Izak Sinnappan bin Abdullah v Majlis Agama Islam Selangor (MAIS) & Ors [2023] MLJU 3208 (HC) [2]–[8]; Syariah Court Civil Procedure (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, ss 244–245 ↩︎
27. Shamir (n 26) [10]–[15]; Syariah Court Civil Procedure (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, s 139(4), (8) ↩︎
28. Shamir (n 26) [16] (applicant’s prayer; author’s translation) ↩︎
29. ibid [1], [17]–[23], [34]–[39] ↩︎
30. Shamir Izak Sinnappan bin Abdullah v Peguam Negara Malaysia, Federal Court Civil Application No 08(i)-289-08/2024(B), order of 28 November 2024 (Abang Iskandar PCA, Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil and Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera FCJJ), refusing leave to appeal from Court of Appeal Civil Appeal No B-01(IM)-695-12/2023 (decided 19 July 2024) ↩︎
31. Shamir (n 26) [1], [6], [10], [15]; Federal Constitution, art 11(1) and Ninth Schedule, List II, item 1; Rosliza (n 1) [83]–[84] ↩︎
32. Kenneth Tee, ‘Judicial Review Needed as Shariah Court Dismissal of Woman’s Apostasy Bid “Irrational”, Appellate Court Told’ Malay Mail (Petaling Jaya, 24 July 2023) https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2023/07/24/judicial-review-needed-as-shariah-court-dismissal-of-womans-apostasy-bid-irrational-appellate-court-told/81473 accessed 26 September 2026 ↩︎
33. Bernama, ‘Appeals Court Denies Woman’s Leave Bid to Renounce Islam’ (MalaysiaNow, 28 August 2023) https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2023/08/28/appeals-court-denies-womans-leave-bid-to-renounce-islam accessed 27 September 2026 (Azizah Nawawi, See Mee Chun and Azizul Azmi Adnan JJCA); see also Kenneth Tee, ‘Court of Appeal Affirms High Court’s Ruling in Denying Malaysian Woman Bid’s to Leave Islam for Confucianism, Buddhism’ Malay Mail (Petaling Jaya, 28 August 2023) https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2023/08/28/court-of-appeal-affirms-high-courts-ruling-in-denying-malaysian-woman-bids-to-leave-islam-for-confucianism-buddhism/87594 accessed 27 September 2026 ↩︎
34. V Anbalagan, ‘Federal Court Denies Woman’s Bid to Renounce Islam’ Free Malaysia Today (Petaling Jaya, 5 February 2024) https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2024/02/05/federal-court-denies-womans-bid-to-renounce-islam accessed 27 September 2026 (Hasnah Hashim and Rhodzariah Bujang FCJJ; Mary Lim FCJ dissenting) ↩︎
35. Ida Lim, ‘Woman Convert Fails to Get High Court Leave in Bid to Be Declared Christian after Divorcing Muslim Man’ Malay Mail (Petaling Jaya, 4 August 2023) https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2023/08/04/woman-convert-fails-to-get-high-court-leave-in-bid-to-be-declared-christian-after-divorcing-muslim-man/83477 accessed 27 September 2026 ↩︎
36. Dahlia Dhaima Abdullah v Majlis Agama Islam Selangor & Another Appeal [2024] 5 CLJ 855, [2025] 1 MLJ 334 (FC) ↩︎
37. ibid [228]–[229], [294]–[315]; Administration of Muslim Law Enactment 1952 (Selangor), s 147 ↩︎
38. Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [38], [40], [234]; Lina Joy lwn Majlis Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan dan lain-lain [2007] 4 MLJ 585, [2007] 3 CLJ 557 (FC) ↩︎
39. Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [72], [235]; Dahlia Dhaima (CA) (n 24) ↩︎
40. Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [63] ↩︎
41. ibid [39], [58]–[60], [86]–[88], [196]–[201] ↩︎
42. ibid [232]–[233] ↩︎
43. ibid [64]–[65] ↩︎
44. ibid [157]–[159] ↩︎
45. Tarani Palani, ‘Woman Loses Bid to Review Apex Court Decision to Change Religious Status’ The Edge Malaysia (Petaling Jaya, 6 January 2025) https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/739932 accessed 27 September 2026 (Zabariah Mohd Yusof, Rhodzariah Bujang and Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera FCJJ) ↩︎
46. Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [225] ↩︎
47. ibid [282]–[283] ↩︎
48. ibid [284] ↩︎
49. ibid [283], [285]. On this footing, Mary Lim FCJ held that the principles of res judicata and abuse of process were not engaged: ibid [284] ↩︎
50. Syariah Civil Procedure (Declaration of Islamic Religious Status) Rules 2018 (Swk LN 225), r 3(1)(a); Sulok Tawie, ‘Look into Cases of Sarawakian Muslim Converts Who Want to Return to Original Faith, State Govt Told’ Malay Mail (Petaling Jaya, 16 May 2019) https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/05/16/look-into-cases-of-sarawakian-muslim-converts-who-want-to-return-to-origina/1753636 accessed 27 September 2026. ↩︎
51. Dhaima (n 36) [294]–[316], esp [316]; Administration of Muslim Law Enactment 1952 (Selangor), s 147 ↩︎
52. Brandon Yeoh Phee Liang lwn Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara, Malaysia [2025] MLJU 2779 (HC) [1]–[2] ↩︎
53. ibid [4]–[6], [10]; ‘Pengesahan Mahkamah mengenai Status agama Pemohon’ at [6(a)] (author’s translation) ↩︎
54. Brandon Yeoh (n 52) [19], [28]–[30], [36] ↩︎
55. Shivanish v Majlis Agama Islam dan Adat Melayu Perak & Anor [2025] MLJU 3013 (HC) ↩︎
56. ibid [3]–[7], [17], [19]–[20], [25]–[26]; Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957, s 13 ↩︎
57. Shivanish (n 55) [20]–[22], [27]–[29]. The passages quoted at [22] as Maqsood are Rosliza (n 1) [28] and [30], the latter adopting Maqsood Ahmad (n 6) [137] ↩︎
58. Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara, Malaysia v Nivethah a/p Thamayandiran & Anor and another appeal [2026] 2 MLJ 272 (CA) ↩︎
59. ibid [21]–[26], [38]–[42]; Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, s 2(1)(b); Islamic Family Law (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, s 111 ↩︎
60. Nivethah (n 58) [58], [80]–[83] ↩︎
61. ibid [70]–[74], [84]–[85] ↩︎
62. ibid [41]–[42], [54]–[57] ↩︎
63. Muguntan Vanar, ‘KK Court Orders “Islam” to Be Removed from Man’s MyKad’ The Star (Petaling Jaya, 17 August 2024) https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2024/08/17/kk-court-orders-039islam039-to-be-removed-from-man039s-mykad accessed 27 September 2026 (Zaleha Rose Pandin J); ‘Sabah Judge Orders “Islam” Removed from Man’s MyKad after Non-Muslim Upbringing’ Malay Mail (Petaling Jaya, 18 August 2024) https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2024/08/18/sabah-judge-orders-islam-removed-from-mans-mykad-after-non-muslim-upbringing/147411 accessed 27 September 2026 ↩︎
64. FMT Reporters, ‘JPN Mistakenly Recorded Christian Family as Muslims, Rules Court’ Free Malaysia Today (Petaling Jaya, 8 January 2026) https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2026/01/08/jpn-mistakenly-recorded-christian-family-as-muslims-rules-court accessed 27 September 2026 (Celestina Stuel Galid J); see also Olivia Miwil, ‘Court: NRD Wrongly Assigned a Person’s Religion without Basis’ New Straits Times (Kuala Lumpur, 8 January 2026) https://www.nst.com.my/amp/news/regional/2026/01/1352982/court-nrd-wrongly-assigned-persons-religion-without-basis accessed 27 September 2026. ↩︎
65. V Anbalagan, ‘Court Declares 76-Year-Old Man “Christian”‘ Free Malaysia Today (Petaling Jaya, 19 January 2026) https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2026/01/19/court-declares-76-year-old-man-christian accessed 27 September 2026 (Amarjeet Singh J); Dalip Kaur v Pegawai Polis Daerah, Balai Polis Daerah, Bukit Mertajam & Anor [1992] 1 MLJ 1 (SC) ↩︎
66. Nurisah bt Abdullah v Majlis Agama Islam Melaka & Ors [2026] MLJU 1895 (HC) [46]–[48] ↩︎
67. ibid [5]–[13], [64]–[66], [134]–[138] ↩︎
68. ibid [156], construing Indira Gandhi a/p Mutho v Pengarah Jabatan Agama Islam Perak & Ors and other appeals [2018] 1 MLJ 545, [2018] 3 CLJ 145 (FC) [181] ↩︎
69. Nurisah (n 66) [52], [57], [93] ↩︎
70. ibid [87]–[88], [93]. At [93] the Court dates the commencement of proceedings to October 2025; elsewhere the judgment gives 15 July 2025 ([140]), which fits the case number (MA-24-5-07/2025). On the later date, the period from majority (18 July 2015) is just under ten years. ↩︎
71. Nurisah (n 66) [89], [94], [154] ↩︎
72. ibid [150]; Lina Joy (n 38); Rosliza (n 1) [91], [93]–[97] ↩︎
73. Jan Sarah bt Jainudin v Ketua Pengarah Pendaftaran Negara Malaysia & Ors [2026] MLJU 2862 (HC, 9 July 2026) ↩︎
74. ibid [2]–[4], [22] ↩︎
75. ibid [1] ↩︎
76. ibid [10], [21], [23]–[24], [29]–[39]; Islamic Family Law Enactment 2004 (Sabah), s 111; Majlis Ugama Islam Negeri Sabah Enactment 2004, s 2(1)(b) ↩︎
77. Jan Sarah (n 73) [9], [35]; Syariah Courts Enactment 2024 (Sabah), s 17(3)(b)(xii), as set out in the State Government’s submission at [9] ↩︎
78. See n 30 (Shamir Izak); Dahlia Dhaima (n 36); Nivethah (n 58) ↩︎
79. Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [64]; Nurisah (n 66) [88], [93] ↩︎
80. Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, ss 61(3)(b)(x), 74(2); Nivethah (n 58) [10]–[11], [85] ↩︎
81. Dalip Kaur (n 65) 7 ↩︎
82. Nurisah (n 66) [91]–[92]; Brandon Yeoh (n 52) [4], [6], [28]–[30] ↩︎
83. Soon Singh (n 22) 501–02 ↩︎
84. See, eg, Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, s 61(3)(b)(x); Jan Sarah (n 73) [9] ↩︎
85. Adam Lee (n 20) [26]–[27], [44] ↩︎
86. Indira Gandhi (n 68) [103]–[104] ↩︎
87. Shamir (n 26) [10]–[15], [34]–[39]; see n 30 ↩︎
88. Indira Gandhi (n 68) [105] ↩︎
89. Rosliza (n 1) [84], [104] ↩︎
90. Nivethah (n 58) [21]–[26], [72]–[73]; Rosliza (n 1) [98] ↩︎
91. Lina Joy (n 38) [104] (Richard Malanjum CJ (Sabah and Sarawak), dissenting) ↩︎
92. Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [316] (Mary Lim FCJ, dissenting) ↩︎
93. Minister for Home Affairs, Malaysia & Anor v Jamaluddin bin Othman [1989] 1 MLJ 418 (SC) 420; Federal Constitution, art 11(5) ↩︎
94. See, eg, Satiah (n 2) [36]–[40] (Sabah, s 69); Nurisah (n 66) [67] (Melaka, ss 95, 100, 105) ↩︎
95. Maqsood Ahmad (n 6) [118(a)] ↩︎
96. Federal Constitution, arts 3(1), 11(1); Report of the Federation of Malaya Constitutional Commission 1957 (Colonial No 330, 1957) para 169; Federation of Malaya Constitutional Proposals 1957 (White Paper, Government Printer 1957) para 57; Report of the Commission of Enquiry, North Borneo and Sarawak, 1962 (Cmnd 1794, 1962) para 148(e) ↩︎
97. Administration of Muslim Law Enactment 1965 (Perak), s 146(2) (the renunciation words were deleted by the Administration of Muslim Law (Amendment) Enactment 1975 (Perak En 2/1975), s 3); Administration of Islamic Law Enactment 1978 (Johor), s 141(2); Administration of the Religion of Islam and the Malay Custom of Pahang Enactment 1982 (En 8/1982), s 103(2); Administration of Islamic Law (Negeri Sembilan) Enactment 1991, s 90(3); Dalip Kaur (n 65) 7 (Hashim Yeop A Sani CJ (Malaya)) ↩︎
98. Lina Joy (n 38) [104] (Richard Malanjum CJ (Sabah and Sarawak), dissenting); Dahlia Dhaima (n 36) [225]–[318] (Mary Lim FCJ, dissenting) ↩︎