No.2 October 2019

Mohammad Hashim Kamali | Mohamed Azam Mohamed Adil | Wan Naim Wan Mansor

For the past decade or so, child conversion cases among Muslim-converts and nonMuslim parents remained a controversial issue in Malaysia. On January 29th 2018, the Federal court ruling in the Indira Gandhi case made two landmark decisions relevant to this issue. First, it reaffirmed the civil court’s power to review all administrative decisions including matters that seemingly fall under the Shariah court. Second, conversion of underage children born under a civil law marriage must now obtain the consent of both parents (if both are still surviving). The decision provoked public responses both negative and positive that were reported widely in the media. Read more on: rb2child_conversion.pdf (iais.org.my)