Penang High Court ordered to hear factory worker’s desire to renounce Islam

PUTRAJAYA, Jan 12 — The Penang High Court will now hear a factory worker’s application to leave Islam, after being ordered to do by its appellate court today.

Siti Hasnah Vangarama Abdullah is challenging her conversion at age seven by religious department officials in 1989, Bernama Online reported.

Chairing a three-member panel, Justice Datuk Seri Abu Samah Nordin ruled the High Court had jurisdiction to hear the originating summons to try her religious status.

Justice Datuk Sulaiman Daud and Datuk Mohd Hishamuddin Mohd Yunus, in the three-man panel, were unanimous with the decision to set aside a August 4 2010 High Court decision in striking out her case on the basis it did not have jurisdiction in what it characterised as a strictly Syariah court case.
Siti Hasnah is now awarded RM10,000 in legal costs.

On December 23, 2009, the 28-year-old named Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (in his capacity as Muslim Welfare Organisation (Perkim) chairman), Perkim officer Raimi Abdullah and the Penang Islamic Religious Council as defendants.

The mother of three seeks a declaration that the defendants wrongfully converted her while she was a child.

In her supporting affidavit,  she said Raimi then “pegawai mubaligh to the Kadi Bandaraya Pulau Pinang” took her as a child from the Ramakrishna orphanage to the Kadi Bandaraya Pulau Pinang, where a conversion ceremony was carried out 21 years ago.

She was asked to recite the "kalimah shahadat"  which meant she renounced Hinduism and embraced Islam.

Siti Hasnah said as a seven year old she did not comprehend the "Sijil Akuan Masuk Islam" document which was made to read, recite and sign. She claims she was coerced to recite.

Therefore she wants the court to order the National Registration Department to alter her recorded information there and effectively her MyKad, to remove the Muslim status and then revert her name back to the Hindu Banggarma A/P Subramaniam.

Raimi in his opposing affidavit said that the record Perkim had showed Siti Hasnah together with her whole family — parents and siblings — converted to Islam in 1983. She would have been one then.
Her parents gave her up to the Ramakrishna orphanage when she was five, where she remained for a year and a half. Her mother died in 1989, and so did her father in 2004.

She married S.Sockalingam, 32, under Hindu customary rites, but failed to register the marriage under civil law.

Gooi Hsiao Leung represented Siti Hasnah while lawyer Matthias Chang appeared for Dr Mahathir with Tuan Zubaidah Tuan Muda and Zatifarahiyah A. Halim for Raimi. Lawyers Hairuddin Othman and Noor Asyimah Ramli are Penang Islamic Religious Council’s counsels.