In Malaysia, the ongoing arm wrestle between the civil court system and the Islamic Court system has reached a key stage in the case of Hindu citizen Mrs Indira Gandhi.
In 2009, Mrs Gandhi’s husband Patmanathan moved out of the family home, taking their 11-month-old daughter Prasana with him. He converted to Islam, taking the name Muhammad Riduan Abdullah, and then filed for unilateral conversion to Islam of their three children without consulting his wife. On this basis, he was given custody of the children from the Shariah Court as, according to Islamic Law, children remain with the Muslim parent if a mixed marriage ends in divorce.
Over the last 12 years there has been a complex process of appeals and counter-appeals to the civil and Islamic court systems. Mrs Gandhi challenged the conversion of her children in the civil courts, seeking custody in the process. After five years, the Malaysian High Court reached a ground-breaking decision in 2014, quashing the conversion of the children on the grounds of its unilateral nature by the father.
In December of the following year, however, the High Court decision was overturned by the Malaysian Court of Appeal, which ruled that matters of religious conversion fell within the jurisdiction of the Shariah Courts. Mrs Gandhi, supported by a team of activists, then took the matter to the Malaysian Federal Court in 2018, which upheld the High Court decision of 2014, quashing the unilateral conversion of the children to Islam.
One of the key actors in this ongoing battle was the Islamic Council of Scholars of the State of Selangor (MAIS), which advocated in favour of the conversion of the children to Islam.
Meanwhile, the father, Muhammad Riduan Abdullah, had gone into hiding with the youngest child, ignoring a High Court instruction to present himself to court and disclose the whereabouts of the youngest daughter.
On 26 January this year the final appeal by MAIS to restore the children’s conversion to Islam was rejected by the Malaysian Federal Court on the grounds that both parents should be involved in a decision to convert children. Mrs Gandhi’s battle to regain her youngest daughter continues.
