The daughter of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has likened the status of Muslim women in Malaysia to that of South African blacks under apartheid.

Marina Mahathir, a prominent social activist, made the claim in her regular Wednesday column for the Star daily to mark International Women's Day.

The column did not appear Wednesday but will be published Thursday, she said.

Marina Mahathir said that apartheid was still being practised in other forms even though it had disappeared from South Africa.

"In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women," she wrote in a copy of the text obtained by AFP .

"We are unique in that we actively legally discriminate against women who are arguably the majority in this country, Muslim women. Non-Muslim Malaysian women have benefited from more progressive laws over the years while the opposite has happened for Muslim women," said Marina Mahathir.

"These differences between the lot of Muslim women and non-Muslim women beg the question: do we have two categories of citizenship in Malaysia, whereby most female citizens have less rights than others?"

Multiple wives

Marina Mahathir told AFP she had been prompted to write the article after outrage over contentious legislation passed last year which could help Muslim men to take multiple wives and claim property after divorce.

The government has agreed to review the Islamic Family Law bill after it triggered a public outcry.

"I, along with a lot of my friends, are just so angry about the situation. We're so angry about the family law which was passed through parliament," she said.

Marina Mahathir also says in her column that Malaysia is the only Islamic nation in which the rights of Muslim women are being eroded.

"As non-Muslim women catch up with women in the rest of the world, Muslim women here are only going backwards," she wrote.

"Only in Malaysia are Muslim women regressing; in every other Muslim country in the world, women have been gaining rights, not losing them."

"Today is International Womens Day. Unfortunately only about 40 percent of the women in this country can celebrate. The rest can only look at their non-Muslim sisters in despair and envy," Mahathir concluded in her column.