UM Conversion Seminar

Yesterday the law faculty of UM organised a seminar on Conversion - Constitutional and Family Law Issues...yinharn, siewwee and even zahir over from genetics attended this seminar...

there were five speakers, mr siva who was kaliammal (the late m. moorthy's wife)'s counsel, dr gan ching chuan who taught us administrative law, en haris representing the bar council, pn nuhalida who was our public international law lecturer and finally adjunct prof mehrun siraj, an expert in family law...

each speaker had their own distinct views. in summary, mr siva told the rather large crowd assembled there about the salient facts of moorthy's case. we found out that the evidence given by the MAIWP was contradictory and lacked merit...

then dr gan followed up with his usual speech on the access to justice and para 1 powers and order 53. but what really stood out was art 124 which spoke of the judge's oath to protect and uphold the constitution. the first thought i had was that it takes courage to protect something, and to believe in it. perhaps cynicism has crept in and we all regard the federal constitution as merely an airy-fairy document, more suited to describing an idyll than actually upholding the people's fundamental liberties...perhaps it has lost its meaning, its power to inspire and encourage us to promote human rights...

en harith was next, he was really sharp and interesting to listen to. his views tended to agree with mr siva. he was a self-described cynic and he described a number of similar cases eg Soon Singh, Syed Zolkafilly and Ng Wan Chan dealing also with the issue of conversion. but a most striking difference was in moorthy's case, the person involved had passed away already and it was impossible to verify 100 %...on this matter, i believe that nobody really knows what goes on in a person's heart...and only God can truly judge a person's conversion or otherwise. but in the meantime, we can only guess. there was a bit on the grundnorm and silent rewriting of the constitution, both issues relevant to today's situations.

pn nurhalida and prof mehrun presented academic viewpoints, with pn nurhalida tending to focus on the international aspect of conversion to and out of islam. she ended with a very long and impressive metaphor that took up all of 6 - 7 lines...and quite a bit to understand. prof mehrun was passionate about her stance on syariah law and conversion...which led to en harith disagreeing vociferously...

it is possible to see both sides of the picture, where does the judge end and the Muslim begin? while it is impossible to predict the outcome of similar cases in the future, what is hoped is that all parties remain rational and appreciate each other's viewpoints and concerns. but then again...when the issue concerns the prickly and difficult problems of religion, it is often near impossible to keep a cool head. and this has been so since time immemorial...