Angela Wu writes in the Wall Street Journal about the tragic denial of basic religious freedom in Malaysia (subscription required):
As Islamist protestors' shouts of "Allah-o-Akbar" echoed through Putrajaya's Palace of Justice, the Malaysian Federal Court Wednesday reaffirmed that religion is determined by court orders and not personal conscience. The two-to-one landmark decision by the country's highest court marks a monumental setback to religious freedom and human rights in Malaysia, a secular country increasingly influenced by Islamism.
Lina Joy, about whom I wrote on this page last September, is an ethnic Malay born into an Islamic family who converted to Christianity in 1998 at the age of 36. Desiring to live as a Christian, she sought to have "Islam" removed from her national ID card so that she could marry her Roman Catholic fiancé. However, the National Registration Department refused her request without an official order from the Islamic Sharia court declaring her an apostate.
On principle, Ms. Joy never applied to the Sharia court because she rightly reasoned that the state could not tell her what she believes in her heart. Further, no Sharia court has ever recognized an application for apostasy made by an ethnic Malay. Instead, a common judgment has been years-long sentences to religious "rehabilitation" camps for re-education in Islam.
Any hope that Ms. Joy might find protection from the federal Constitution was crushed by the Supreme Court's reaffirmation of the doctrine that if you are born a Muslim, you will stay a Muslim until the community decides otherwise. Ignoring Lina Joy's years of Catholic study, church attendance, and the baptism certificate she presented as proof of her sincerity, Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim said in his decision, "You can't at whim and fancy convert from one religion to another."
Ms. Joy remains in hiding, trapped in a legal quagmire designed by a state judging her religion according to her ethnicity and not what she professes. Meanwhile her country-whose motto is "Unity is Strength"-is at a cultural and legal crossroads. Wednesday's ruling is a step toward an Islamic state in which group religious sentiment trumps the most fundamental human right, the right without which other rights are meaningless-the right to follow one's conscience. Let us hope Malaysia can turn back in time.
This is truly sad and affects many more than Ms. Joy. The basic right of freedom of religion often taken so much for granted in the US is denied to millions around the world. Freedom of religious is more fundamental than the right to vote and without it, there can be no freedom of speech or freedom of the press. To put this in context, imagine you were either forced at the point of a gun to either go to church on Sundays (if you currently don't) or else you were denied that opportunity to do so (if you currently do).
This story certainly should be getting much more press than it has. I wish Americans in general and Christians in particular were more concerned about issues of religious freedom around the world. We seem to care much more about the right for someone to cast a vote one day every several years than we do about their right to think and believe the way they see fit on a daily basis.
Please pray for Ms. Joy and all those around the world suffering under religious persecution.
Read the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's press release and more about it on Angela's blog here and here. Also see coverage of this story in the International Herald Tribune and Malaysia's New Straits Times.
I just checked out The Right to Be Wrong from GMU's library a few days ago. It is a book about the importance of religious freedom by Kevin Seamus Hasson, founder of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. I will have to bump that up to the top of my reading list.
Read my previous posts on religious freedom, including this one quoting Angela's previous WSJ article on Ms. Joy from last September.
For anyone who missed it, Angela just moved her blog to http://glassesoff.org. Be sure to check it out!
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