no freedom of religion in our country
Post on May.30, 2007
as expected - the verdict: she lose.
lina joy was once a muslim and now she wanted to be a christian, but the court says no – so say what? are you going to tell me again there is freedom of religion in our country? lina joy doesn’t have the freedom to choose her religion! don’t give me all the blah blah about once a muslim always a muslim, no ‘gostan’ if you are a muslim, or the apostasy issue, blah blah blah. i know. i know. whatever… it all still boils down that an individual has no rights to choose her/his religion.
well, as we all expected – the federal court ruled that lina joy must remain a muslim.
Lina Joy’s long wait for her conversion to Christianity to be recognised by law is over – the Federal Court ruled today that she remains a Muslim and her religious status will not be removed from her identity card.
Delivering the judgment to a packed gallery this morning in Putrajaya, Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim ruled that jurisdiction remains with the Syariah court.
The chief justice stated that he concurred with the majority decision – Justice Alauddin Mohd Sheriff who was the last to read his judgment agreed with Ahmad Fairuz’s findings.
Justice Richard Malanjun gave a dissenting judgment.
The case hinged on a decision by the National Registration Department not to remove the word ‘Islam’ from Lina’s MyKad.
The department said it needed a syariah court order certifying her renouncement from Islam before it could make the change.
read further from malaysiakini, the 3 questions lina posed before the court.
Filed in Uncategorized
May 30th, 2007 on 1:01 PM
They are trying to sweep the issue under the rug, but I don’t think that will be possible. A real sad day for Freedom.
lucia: yes indeed. remember the date – 30 may 2007.
May 30th, 2007 on 1:42 PM
It matters that her appeal was dismissed. But I take heart in one thing: that in her heart, she’s christian. I wonder how that makes muslim ultras feel.. LOL
lucia: yep. it’s the heart that matters.
May 30th, 2007 on 1:47 PM
50 years after Merdeka and it is a sad day. Freedom of religion is not available in Malaysia.
lucia: yes… but for malays/muslim only… which though doesn’t involve me, yet i weep for the country.
May 30th, 2007 on 2:04 PM
"an individual has no rights to choose her/his religion"
I am an individual, so are you. Do we have the rights to choose our religion? Yes we do.
Don’t exaggerate the issue larger than it is… it’s a matter of Muslims in Malaysia have no freedom of switch religion. The religious freedom of other devotees are not affected.
lucia: didn’t you notice i made that phrase ("an individual has no rights…"
after i mentioned about muslim, so this applies to mustlim lah. simple as that. of course for sure most certainly i don’t mean me or any other non muslim. i meant the malays/muslims individuals. anyway it will also applies to non muslim when they become muslim (but then they;ll be consider muslim already).
i am not exaggerating the issue at all. this post is about lina joy’s verdict/case, thus people will know i am talking about muslim. in fact at many blogs and news media, it was also mentioned about no freedom of religion – that is freedom for the muslim to choose to leave islam and join other religion. in fact i will post up news/views from blogs/news media/etc that talks about freedom of religion eroding and of course everybody are smart enough to know it concerns malays/muslim/islam and not non muslim individuals. (see my latest post).
May 30th, 2007 on 3:58 PM
Actually, Jee is right: it just means that Muslims in our country don’t have the freedom to switch out of their religion, despite provisions in the constitution.
That’s ALL it means. I know it’s absurd when people want others to believe what they have rejected already, but that’s the way things are.
But it really starts to become tragic when the above ruling is applied to the Moorthy case, for example.
lucia: yep. see my response to jess. this post is all about muslim so i was talking about muslim.
May 30th, 2007 on 7:38 PM
Quoted from http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/guests.php?itemid=5051
‘if Lina Joy is allowed to leave Islam, then millions of Muslims would follow suit’ …Mufti Harussani Zakaria was quoted in the very same program saying ‘So when we allow all these things (i.e. apostasy), we are FINISHED. Malaysia is finished’. It is very sad to me that a religious official of his stature and education can formulate such a deduction. Islam is FINISHED when we allow people to leave it?
What would be the world like today if a few thousand years ago, the brahmins refused to let a certain young fella named Gautama Siddaharta to leave his religion to seek his truth?
lucia: thanks for pointing me to that post at malaysia today. indeed it is sad (and silly) this mufti’s thinking, that islam is finished when people leave. you mean he doesn’t trust islam itself? was he saying islam is so fragile that when people leave the religion will go kaput?
May 31st, 2007 on 3:00 AM
no wonder in iran, baha’is are prosecuted and discriminated because it’s a treat to islam. baha’i believe that there’s a prophet after mohammad. hope it will not happen in malaysia
by the way, please digg this to make people aware: http://digg.com/world_news/Malaysia_rejects_Christian_appeal
lucia: thanks for the reminder re: digg.
May 31st, 2007 on 10:21 AM
I suggest that we start promoting Baha’iman’s digg posting. I want the world to know what Malaysia is.
lucia: ya, that we should all do!
May 31st, 2007 on 11:53 AM
It is more a political decision rather than a judicial decision at its core.
lucia: or rather a religious decision. someone commented that the judges made the decision based on them being a muslim…. one even say the judges made their decision because of the huge crowd gathered outside chanting prayers. (fear?)
October 23rd, 2009 on 9:20 PM
You mean mankind just sprouted like mushrooms? ,