QUESTION TIME | The withdrawal by BN of the important Section 88A clause which guards against unilateral religious conversion of a child by one parent in the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act (Amendment) Bill, ignores legitimate non-Muslim rights and favours a hardline stance more in consonance with PAS’ Islam.

It is symptomatic of an increasingly blatant shift of BN towards a more extreme positioning in favour of perceived Malay-Muslim “rights”, even when the secular Federal Constitution confers no such rights on Malays or Muslims.

It means that Umno, which basically makes strategy in BN and largely ignores other BN constituents as the latest event clearly shows, is shifting more towards appealing to Malay votes, even at the expense of alienating non-Muslims.

That’s a desperate as well as a dangerous approach when nearly two-fifths of the population is non-Muslim and Malays form about half of the population - you do need substantial non-Malay support as well. In the 2008 general election, mainly Hindu Indians, traditionally BN supporters but formed a mere 7 percent of the population, solidly voted opposition (by some estimates over 80 percent) and helped swing many seats.

While the two highlighted cases who will be affected by the Section 88A withdrawal involve Hindu Indians, the Buddhists, Christians and others will be affected too and will take unkindly to what amounts to a flagrant violation of non-Muslim rights.

Across the South China Sea in Sabah and Sarawak, bumiputera Muslims who practice a much more liberal brand of Islam, where members of the same family can come from different religions, are not necessarily going to side with the more extreme and strict interpretations of Islam practised in the peninsula.

Section 88A reads: “(1) Where a party to a marriage has converted to Islam, the religion of any child of the marriage shall remain as the religion of the parties to the marriage prior to the conversion, except where both parties to the marriage agree to a conversion of the child to Islam, subject always to the wishes of the child where he or she has attained the age of eighteen years.

"(2) Where the parties to the marriage professed different religions prior to the conversion of one spouse to Islam, a child of the marriage shall be at liberty to remain in the religion of either one of the prior religions of the parties before the conversion to Islam."

The decision to withdraw Section 88A was announced by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman Said on Monday. It follows upon the decision of the National Registration Department to appeal a unanimous Court of Appeal decision which ruled that a child conceived out of wedlock can take on his or her father's surname and that the edict against this by the National Fatwa Committee does not have the force of law.

The deputy prime minister, reflecting the increasingly hard stance of government in favour of Islamic laws and fatwas even when they contradicted the law of the land, said that Muslims must stand together in opposing anyone challenging decisions by the National Fatwa Committee.

"In this case, Muslims must unite and agree that Islam must be respected and that we do not want any decisions made by the National Fatwa Committee to be challenged by anyone, whether an individual or a different legal system outside of the fatwa committee," Zahid said...