Over his dead body - The Guardian

By John Aglionby

Religious minorities in predominantly Muslim Malaysia have launched a campaign to amend the country's constitution after the high court ruled it had no jurisdiction to intervene in a decision made by an Islamic court over a dead man's burial that his non-Muslim wife disputed.

The minorities fear that unless action is taken, the Islamic, or sharia, authorities could bully their way into further restricting non-Muslims' rights, particularly those of women and children.

"We cannot allow a small group who are extreme in their views to dominate the nation's social and religious life," the Rev Wong Kim Kong, a spokesman for the Malaysian Consultative Council for Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism (MCCBCHS), told Guardian Unlimited. "If no action is taken by the government then it might sow disharmony."

The campaign was launched after the high court in Kuala Lumpur ruled on Wednesday it had no authority to address, let alone overrule, a sharia court decision that a dead man, Moorthy Maniam, must be given a Muslim burial because several people said he had converted to Islam even though there was no documentary evidence to confirm the conversion. Mr Moorthy's Hindu wife, along with other people, contested the assertion that he had converted, but she was not allowed to present her case in the sharia court.

Mr Moorthy, 36, a former soldier who was a member of the first Malaysian team to scale Mount Everest, died on December 20 after going into a coma on November 11. He had been paralysed since 1998. He was given a Muslim burial on Wednesday.

The Islamic affairs department claimed in court that Mr Moorthy converted verbally in October 2004. His widow, Kaliammal Sinnasamy, said he continued to practise Hinduism up until his final illness, that he visited a Hindu temple, ate pork and drank alcohol.

[More at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/dec/30/worlddispatch.johnaglionby]