Muslim Lawyers Council Malaysia has again suggested that the government set up a tribunal with judges from syariah and civil courts to resolve interfaith custodial cases.

"We came up with the suggestion two years ago, but there was no feedback from the government," said its president Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar.

He was asked to comment on the Appellate Court's ruling that the civil courts have no jurisdiction in the interfaith custodial matter brought by a Muslim convert K Pathmanathan @ Muhammad Ridhuan Abdullah against his ex-wife M Indira Gandhi.

Zainul opined that a tribunal would be a better channel to address the interfaith custodial matters than the special court proposed by a Court of Appeal judge in the ruling on Indira's case.

"The court is very strict. You have to get leave from the court and there is a need to prepare the pleadings.

"The special court looks similar (to the tribunal court), but it is better to avoid the courts.

"In a family matter, we need (the procedure) to be very flexible and informal," he said when met at UIM International Convention.

Zainul, who is one of the speakers at the forum dubbed "Religious and Children Rights in Malaysia", said the courts and the lawyers cannot be blamed for judgments which are not in favour of non-Muslims.

The current judiciary system prohibits Muslims from going to the civil courts while non-Muslims cannot turn to syariah courts, he said, adding that this is the cause of the unending disputes over custody of children.

"The solution is to amend such laws. Without the willingness of legislation to amend such laws, the problem will go on," he said during a question-and-answer session.

"The court and the lawyers cannot be blamed. The lawyers just argue the case in court according to the law."

Third-party agenda

He opined that the Syariah Court needed to open up to non-Muslims while Muslims too could go to the civil courts to settle legal disputes.

In this, the relevant provision needed to be amended including the federal constitution.

This is one of the matters the government needed to deal with when it came to interfaith disputes aside from the Federal Court's benchmark ruing in allowing unilateral conversions of minor, he said.

The syariah lawyer also questioned the agenda of third parties who insisted on taking the case all the way to the Federal Court.

Citing a interfaith conversion case where he represented the father, he said the non-Muslim mother had claimed she was not the one who requested for her case to be brought to the apex court.

Without naming the party, he said the woman had converted to Islam one year after the trial and patched up the broken relationship with her ex-husband.