Majlis Agama Islam dan Adat Istiadat Melayu Perlis

On the court record

Marks how the civil courts define the limits of their jurisdiction over religious authorities and work out the constitutional protections surrounding conversion, particularly of minors.

Majlis Agama Islam dan Adat Istiadat Melayu Perlis (the Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council of Perlis) appears in the reported judgments as a state Islamic religious authority named as a party in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan), in matters concerning the reviewability of a fatwa and the constitutional questions surrounding conversion to Islam. Its presence marks disputes at the boundary between the civil courts and the religious authorities.

In connected High Court matters, framed in Malay, the council was a respondent to applications for judicial review under Order 53 and Order 92 of the Rules of Court 2012 challenging a fatwa of the State Fatwa Committee. The central questions were whether a fatwa can be reviewed through judicial review (sama ada sesuatu fatwa boleh disemak melalui semakan kehakiman), and how Article 121(1A) of the Federal Constitution — which removes matters within the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts from the civil courts — bears on that review, together with whether the making of a fatwa is a prerogative discretion of the Ruler.

A significant Federal Court decision engaged the council in the constitutional law of conversion. There the court considered section 117(b) of the Perlis administration-of-religion enactment and the unilateral conversion of children to Islam, whether the Federal Court's decision in Indira Gandhi was confined to the Federal Territories and inapplicable to Perlis, the conversion of minors, whether the authoritative text of the Federal Constitution is the English version, and whether a certificate of conversion is conclusive proof of the facts stated in it, engaging the reading of the word "parent" in Article 12(4). Across the decisions, the council illustrates how the civil courts define the limits of their jurisdiction over religious authorities, and how the constitutional protections surrounding conversion — particularly of minors — are worked out at the highest level.