1. ) NURUL FADILAH YAP BINTI ABDULLAH 2. ) NURUL ADLINA YAP BINTI ABDULLAH v 1. ) MAJLIS AGAMA ISLAM SELANGOR (MAIS) 2. ) Kerajaan Negeri Selangor

Case Significance

Illustrates the jurisdictional boundary between the civil and Syariah courts in conversion disputes: where a person has undergone a recorded conversion to Islam, a challenge to its validity falls within the Syariah Court's jurisdiction, distinguishing cases where no conversion ever occurred.

This decision of the High Court of Malaya at Shah Alam concerns an originating summons by two plaintiffs seeking declarations, in substance, that they had never validly become Muslims. The plaintiffs, who had been the subject of a conversion to Islam recorded in 2013 through an Islamic welfare organisation, asked the civil High Court to declare that they had not entered Islam lawfully, had never professed the religion of Islam within the meaning of the Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003 or of the relevant provisions of the Federal Constitution, and were entitled to profess their own (Chinese) religion under Article 11(1). They named the State Islamic Religious Council (Majlis Agama Islam Selangor) and the State Government as defendants and invoked, among other authorities, the Federal Court's decisions in Rosliza Ibrahim v Kerajaan Negeri Selangor and Dahlia Dhaima v Majlis Agama Islam Selangor.

The central question was one of jurisdiction: whether the civil court or the Syariah Court was the proper forum to determine the validity and effect of the plaintiffs' conversion. The court distinguished the situation from that in Rosliza Ibrahim, where the person concerned had never undergone any conversion at all, so that the civil court could determine that she had never been a Muslim. Here, by contrast, the plaintiffs had been the subject of a recorded conversion, and the questions they raised — whether that conversion was valid, whether they had professed Islam under the State enactment, and whether the State Islamic laws applied to them — were questions that fell within the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court rather than the civil High Court. Because the reliefs sought turned on matters reserved to the Syariah jurisdiction, the court held it had no jurisdiction to grant them and dismissed the originating summons with costs. The judgment illustrates the jurisdictional boundary between the civil and Syariah courts in disputes over the validity of a conversion to Islam.