Danial Farhan bin Zainul Rijal

On the court record

Danial Farhan bin Zainul Rijal appears in the corpus in constitutional and administrative-law matters concerning religion, the civil-Syariah interface and the reach of judicial review, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan). One High Court matter, appearing for the respondent, was an application for leave to intervene in judicial review proceedings, testing whether the proposed intervener was a 'proper person' with a direct interest under Order 53 rule 8 of the Rules of Court 2012, whether there was an arguable case, and whether the court's decision would prejudice that interest in the context of a Syariah consent order. A Federal Court matter, appearing for the appellant, addressed the unilateral conversion of children to Islam, engaging section 117(b) of the Perlis administration-of-Islam enactment and whether the Federal Court's decision in Indira Gandhi a/p Mutho was confined to the Federal Territories or applied equally to Perlis; the appeal also raised whether a certificate of conversion is conclusive proof of the facts stated in it, the reading of the word 'parent' in Article 12(4) of the Federal Constitution, and the primacy of the authoritative English text of the Constitution. A further Federal Court matter, appearing for the respondent, concerned a judicial review challenging the validity of a fatwa: whether the fatwa was valid in purporting to direct federal authorities to take action, whether it could lawfully apply to SIS Forum (Malaysia) — a company limited by guarantee and therefore an artificial legal person — and to non-Muslim individuals, and whether it could direct the blocking of social-media content or the confiscation of publications under federal laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act. The profile is that of an advocate engaged with some of the most significant public-law questions at the boundary of civil and religious jurisdiction.