An elderly ethnic Chinese man has been buried as a Muslim after his Buddhist family lost a battle with the Islamic authorities who said he had converted, his son said today.


 Police seized the body of Gan Eng For, who died on Sunday aged 74, after his oldest son - himself a Muslim convert - said he had switched to the religion last year.


 Other family members said Gan could not have converted because he was senile and paralysed after suffering two strokes.


 "He could not even move his arms or talk," his other son 42-year-old Gan Hock Sin told
 
 AFP
 
 .


 "It is shocking that Islamic authorities say he recited some Islamic words when he was being converted last year," he said.


 
 
 Gov't not being fair
 
 


 The dispute, the latest in a series of conversion rows in Malaysia, came shortly after a court ordered a Christian woman's body be returned to her family after Islamic authorities admitted she had not converted.


 The cases have fed accusations over the growing "Islamisation" of Malaysia, where the population is dominated by Muslim Malays living alongside ethnic Chinese and Indian communities.


 Gan criticised the conduct of the state Islamic authorities who buried his father in a Muslim cemetery yesterday on the orders of a religious court.


 "They have been cruel to my mother and my family. We could not see his body before he was buried. This government is not fair," he said.


 "Before my father died, he had told my mother that he wished to be buried according to Chinese rituals."

An elderly ethnic Chinese man has been buried as a Muslim after his Buddhist family lost a battle with the Islamic authorities who said he had converted.

Man buried as Muslim amid conversion row

~RM12

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