Malaysian fish is not banned anymore

Agence France-Presse - 3/18/2009 8:50 AM GMT

EU inspectors clear Malaysian frozen seafood: official

European Union inspectors have given the green light to Malaysian frozen seafood, 10 months after exports were suspended over health issues, an EU official said Wednesday.

However, all EU member nations will have to agree to the report by the body's Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) before exports can resume, the official told AFP.

Malaysian seafood exports to the EU were banned in June after an inspection raised health concerns.

The Star daily said that EU experts have approved frozen seafood products from five Malaysian companies and four farms following a visit earlier this month and that they will now inspect live sea catches.

"It looks good but it is not official and will not be official for some weeks," the EU official said on condition of anonymity.

"Technically, it has not been approved yet as there is a chance that the recommendations of the experts and inspectors could be overturned," he said.

"The EU now has to review the report and present it and its recommendations to the member states, and only when they agree will it be approved. This could take up to six weeks."

Malaysia's Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai told the Star his ministry would try to help expedite the process.

"I am happy the FVO has cleared all the doubts and has readmitted Malaysia into the EU import list," he reportedly said.

Malaysia's frozen seafood exports to the EU are worth about 600 million ringgit (164 million US dollars) annually, the paper reported.

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Agence France-Presse - 3/16/2009 4:34 AM GMT

Malaysian Islamic court allows woman to revert to Buddhism

A Malaysian Islamic court on Monday upheld an unusual decision allowing an ethnic Chinese woman to revert to her Buddhist faith, saying her conversion to Islam had never been valid.

Apostasy, or renouncing the faith, is one of the gravest sins in Islam and a highly sensitive issue in Malaysia where Islamic sharia courts have rarely allowed people to abandon the religion.

Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, a 39-year-old originally named Tan Ean Huang, said she had never practised Islamic teachings since she converted in 1998 and only did so to enable her to marry her Iranian husband.

The couple married in 2004 and she filed for renunciation after her husband left her, winning approval from a religious court last year in a decision appealed by the Islamic Religious Council in Penang state.

Penang's Sharia Appeal Court on Monday said Tan could revert to Buddhism, but only because her conversion was not valid and done only for the sake of marriage.

"She has been living a non-Islamic lifestyle and praying to deities and this clearly shows she never embraced Islam," said Ibrahim Lembut, one of a three-member panel of judges.

"The question of conversion does not arise because she never intended to become a Muslim in the first place."

Tan welcomed the decision.

"I am very happy that this is finally over. It has been a long struggle," she told reporters outside the court.

The Penang Islamic Religious Council also endorsed the ruling, which it said confirmed the status quo in Malaysia, where religious courts operate in parallel to civil courts.

"The original decision gave the impression that one could simply convert out of Islam. So now it is clear this is not the case," its lawyer Ahmad Munawar Abdul Aziz told reporters.

"In this case, the court has made it clear that this was a unique case where her conversion itself was invalid," he added. "So this removes the fear among the Muslim community that conversions may be subject to review."

Islam is Malaysia's official religion and more than 60 percent of the nation's 27 million people are Muslim Malays.

The country is also home to large ethnic Chinese and Indian communities who have complained of growing "Islamisation" that is undermining their rights.