Some may see Lina Joy as a fool to fight this all the way up, but it was an inevitable fight that was a matter of time. Sadly, if this was done in the 60's or 70's, things might have turned out differently.
Let the dust settle and we have the following to work with:
1. The constitution is fundamentally flawed for religious conversion matters - at least to those who understand 'fairness' and 'justices' in the sense of the blindfolded lady with the tipping scales.
2. Non- Muslims got a big problem if they continue to vote for subsistence and not ideals.
3. Dr Mahathir Mohamad is right - 'you get the government you voted for (so stop whining and do something).
We have to work around these facts, and there's one fact that we probably can work with. Article (8) of the Federal Constitution says that all are equal before the law. We must argue that we need to be equalised since Muslims have far more restrictions than non-Muslims when it comes to conversion of religion. Otherwise, Article (8) will be null and void because we have sub-laws that make non-Muslims less restricted than Muslims. Therefore all are not equal before the law.
Lawmakers must now push for it to be just as sufficiently difficult for people from other religions to exit their religion as Muslims. To follow Article (8), the National Registration Department must ask non-Muslims converting whether to Islam or to other religions to produce some certificate from the applicants' former religious authority or from family members of significance.
This would prevent cases of family members not knowing their own family members have converted to another religion - be it Islam or any other, and cause the controversies of families being split up, dead bodies being snatched to be buried elsewhere etc.
The infrastructure for this doesn't exist of course. But if you are serious about restoring some 'fairness', this is what you need to built and fought for. As I can recall, other religions might not have explicit processes and procedures to deal with apostasy. But hey, this is religion we are talking about. You can come up with something.
This solution does imply losing your freedom to choose a religion freely, but we are only trying to be fair and on par with our Muslim friends. Like it or not, this restriction will reduce the growing divide between those subjected to the Syariah law and those who don't.
We are Malaysia, and this is a unique and peculiar country with a strange constitution. So why not?