Religious Freedom and Family Rights

It is good that many groups are discussing different issues in the aftermath of the Moorthy saga such as the freedom to practise one’s religion and the rights of families if a husband or wife converts.

One of the basic tenets of Islam is that “there is no compulsion” but one wonders why some Malaysian Muslims who want to leave the religion are being denied a hearing in the civil courts as Malaysia is still a secular country as defined in our much abused Constitution, though Muslims form the majority.

Of course if people break civil laws, they should be brought to justice in this earth by the authorities but I believe if people break religious laws, they will be held to account to a higher authority. A secular nation has no right to use civil authority and resources to enforce religion on anyone.

One of the curious facts about the Moorthy conversion was that it was kept secret from his family until he went into a coma. While it is a person’s right not to tell anyone his religion, I wonder why our NRD bothers to include this data in our Mykad.

One of the basic building blocks of any society is the family and if the family is well taken care of and remains strong and united, society will progress.

The effect of Moorthy converting and not informing his wife and family was that they were put in a position of not being given the chance to also convert or even seek a divorce and a civil settlement of the family assets before the new convert becomes subject to Syariah laws.

It is quite bad publicity for the religion when the new convert can choose not to disclose the conversion and subject his own family to such turmoil on his death.

As other have remarked, we need to have judges who can pass judgement free of religious or racial bias. Let us hope we still have lawmakers left who can salvage sanity out of the constitutional mess.

photo: http://www.chs.uci.edu/images/building-blocks.jpg