A few years back, while applying for my MyKad at the National Registration Department, I was asked by the officer what my religion was.

"Christian?"

"No religion," I replied.

The officer, a Malay woman, who was presumably Muslim since this is Malaysia , was perplexed.

"Christian?" she asked again, clearly unsatisfied.

"No, I don't have a religion," I maintained despite her questioning look, and I sensed, discomfort.

"No religion?"

"No religion."

"You're not Christian? Buddhist, then?"

"No. No religion."

It seemed to me that it was with some reluctance that the officer finally keyed in the information I had given her. The last time I checked, my MyKad actually says under religion: 'Tak ada.' ('None').

If it was a relief to me then that the right information was keyed in into an official document as important as my MyKad. It has become even more significant for me today that I am able to maintain my status without needing any authority's official sanction.

I was born into a Catholic family. I was baptised while still a baby and raised as a Catholic by God-loving parents. I have all the church certificates to prove my passing of religious rites as a Catholic from baptism to first holy communion to confirmation. I studiously attended catechism classes in school, youth camps at church and mass every Sunday until I was exposed to philosophy and feminism in university and concluded that the institution of the church and some of its doctrines and practices no longer made sense to me.

But whatever my reasons for leaving the church and for no longer practising the faith I was born into, my ability to decide for myself, as a mature adult, what I choose to believe in is what Article 11 of the Federal Constitution means to me.

Article 11 is a guarantee of freedom of religion by the highest law of the land. This freedom is also enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which the United Nations has adopted.

From just my own experience, one has to somewhat agree with Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin that at least one Western media report on the Lina Joy case was a tad mischievous.

The BBC , for example, headlined a news report Malaysia rejects Christian appeal last Wednesday following the Federal Court majority decision that ruled that Joy, who converted from Islam to Christianity, must first seek a certificate from the syariah court before she can drop 'Islam' from her MyKad.

The headline would make it seem that Malaysia is intolerant of other faiths, especially Christianity, and would deny Christians their right. But in the specific case of who decides what gets put into the MyKad, it would seem that my right as a Christian to state my change in faith is secure while that of a Muslim isn't.

This, of course, raises question about Article 8 of the Federal Constitution and Article 7 of the UDHR which stipulates that all citizens have equality before the law. These legal guarantees, both nationally and internationally, are meaningless if any one of us is denied the right to stipulate what we choose to believe in, either officially or unofficially.

Sure, it's not the end of the road for Lina or others in the same situation. It's true that an application can be made to the Syariah court to leave Islam. But apostasy is a crime in more than half the states in Malaysia, punishable by detention and counselling (as currently being experienced by the well-publicised case of M Revathi who has been separated from her husband and baby), a fine of not more than RM5,000 and/or a jail sentence of not more than three years.

In Kelantan and Terengganu, where hudud law was passed under PAS, the punishment is death. And even if hudud law is not enforced yet in the other states, even the Education Ministry-sanctioned SPM syllabus for Islamic Studies teaches authoritatively that death is the punishment for apostasy.

Additionally, only Negri Sembilan has proper procedures for leaving the faith, but even so, the Syariah court judge can reject a person's application to leave Islam.

And so, while it's a relief to finally have a judgement on Joy's case, will we be able to move on? Or has the judgement, which we've been told to accept, actually created other real-life dilemmas by making worse the existing situation for fellow Malaysians who are Muslims? Truthfully, it's little comfort that my right to determine my faith is intact while other Malaysians may not share that right.

But what will be even less comforting would be if we fail, as a nation, to find ways to talk about the situation we find ourselves in order to find solutions which are compassionate and just for all Malaysians.