‘Non-Muslims meddling in Islamic laws a threat to Muslims’

PAS leader says it does not bode well for Muslims when non-Muslims meddle in amendments to state Islamic laws that are in accordance with the constitution.

(FMT) – Non-Muslims interfering with state Islamic laws are a threat to the Muslims who make up the majority of the country’s population, says PAS leader Khairuddin Aman Razali.

Khairuddin, who is also MP for Kuala Nerus, said this in response to the backlash by various quarters over Perlis’s amendment to its shariah law, which allows for a child to be unilaterally converted to Islam.

Khairuddin said Perlis’s Islamic Religion Administration Enactment (Amendment) 2016 Bill passed on Friday was in line with the constitution and should therefore not be criticised.

He said that it was in fact the federal government’s move to pass a new law banning unilateral child conversions, that ran against current provisions in the constitution.

“This issue should not be sensationalised and must be viewed objectively.

“It does not bode well for the Muslims, when non-Muslims appear to have become bolder by meddling in amendments to state Islamic laws that are in accordance with the constitution.

“It is viewed as a threat to the state’s Islamic powers as accorded by the Malaysian constitution,” he said in a statement published on PAS’s mouthpiece Harakah Daily.

The information chief for PAS’s Ulama wing stressed that those who disagreed with the amendment could express their objection by proposing to amend Article 12(4) of the constitution instead.

He said this was because the amendment to the Perlis enactment only involved a change in the term “parents” to “parent or guardian”, similar to the term used in the constitution.

Meanwhile minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman Said had proposed to amend the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 (LRA) to put an end to unilateral child conversions.

She told reporters earlier this week that the Cabinet had agreed to also amend Article 12(4) of the constitution.

However, Khairuddin warned that doing so may allow “hundreds of past cases to be judicially reviewed”.