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.
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