By: Muhammad Akmal Bin Mohd Zamri, Muhammad Nurhaqif Bin Nor-Ishammady & Umar Mahfuz Bin Sulaiman
Unilateral conversion does not only revolve around the issue of freedom of religion as affirmed in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), but one must also consider other constituents, namely, parental rights, the jurisdictional conflict between Syariah Courts and civil court, inconsistency of the state enactments, the custody of the children as well as the breakdown in a marriage between a converting spouse and non-converting spouse. In addressing this matter, it is akin to the domino effect due to its intricacies as one conversation of a topic would need a follow up of a conversation for the other topics as well or else the full picture of this issue would appear incomplete. Remarkably, this issue has already reached our shore in the past two decades evident in the concatenation of cases such as Genga Devi, Shamala Sathaseelan, Nedunchelian, Subashini, Deepa a/p Subaramaniam, Indira Gandhi and Lee Chang Yong.
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