The government moved to cool anger among non-Muslims over a legal dispute that saw a mountaineering hero buried as a Muslim over his Hindu widow's protests, with a minister saying civil courts should decide such matters.

Former army commando M Moorthy's death last week touched off ethnic and religious tensions when Islamic authorities claimed the body, saying he had converted to Islam.

The Syariah religious court confirmed the conversion and the High Court said it could not overrule its verdict, meaning that Moorthy's widow Kaliammal Sinnasamy had no chance to argue her case.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Nazri Aziz, told the New Straits Times that when there was a dispute over conversions, the case should be heard in a civil court where all sides can be represented.

"When a person's faith is in question, the civil court should be allowed to hear it. Let evidence from both sides be produced," he told the daily.

"If we let the Muslim court decide this, justice might not be served because it would decide in favour of Islam."

Kaliammal has said she was stunned when the army informed her of Moorthy's "conversion", after he lapsed into a coma on Nov 11 at the age of 36.

Moorthy not circumcised

Islamic authorities and army colleagues said Moorthy, who rose to fame after scaling Mount Everest in 1997 as part of a Malaysian mountaineering team, converted to Islam last year and changed his name to Mohammad Abdullah.

But Kaliammal denied the claim, saying he was not circumcised, ate pork and celebrated the Hindu festivals.

Representatives of minority religions said yesterday that racial harmony in Malaysia had been jeopardised by the Moorthy case, and that they feared syariah courts were taking precedence over civil courts in Malaysia's dual-track system.

"We want to convey a very strong message to the government that we are uneasy and we are feeling uncomfortable, even to the extent of feeling threatened in terms of the religious and racial harmony in our country," said spokesman Wong Kim Kong.

"Eventually, slowly, we are fearful that people may assume sharia is the supreme law of the land," Wong said on behalf of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism - the country's main interfaith civil society group.