Catholic Bishop Emeritus Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing has described the decision of an appellate court on unilateral religious conversion of minors, as a “triumph for supremacist Islam that translates as a setback to constitutional democratic norms.”

The Jesuit-trained prelate declared that the Court of Appeal's decision yesterday to overturn a High Court ruling quashing the unilateral conversion of three children by their Muslim father who was Hindu when he sired the children with kindergarten teacher M Indira Gandhi, has literally turned Malaysia from a parliamentary democracy into a now-quasi Islamic state.

The mother had applied to the Ipoh High Court to quash the conversion in 2009 of her three children by her Muslim convert husband.