A kindergarten teacher in Malaysia is to appeal to a higher court after she lost a case challenging the conversion of all her three children to Islam by her ex-husband.
M. Indira Gandhi will appeal to Malaysia's Federal Court after the Court of Appeal ruled that her children's conversion could only be overturned by a sharia court and not a civil court.
The ruling highlights the predicaments faced by converts and others in Malaysia. It also means that Gandhi lost the right to be reunited with her daughter who has been in the custody of her ex-husband since the divorce nine years ago.
Gandhi, a Hindu, cannot in fact go to a sharia court to get the conversions of all three children overturned because she is not a Muslim.
The lawyer S. Selvarajah, who represented the Catholic church in its recent lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful battle to use the word "Allah" for God, said Gandhi will have no choice but to complete the legal process and have her case heard by the Federal Court.
The case is being watched with interest in Malaysia because of the controversies over conversions that take place there. Under Malaysia's federal constitution, a guardian or parent can legally decide the religion of any child of theirs under the age of 18.
Gandhi is arguing that the conversion of her three children by her former husband Muhammad Riduan Abdullah is unconstitutional because it was decided by one parent only, according to Malaysian Insider.
Two of the children, Tevi Darsiny and Karan Dinish, are in the care of their mother while the youngest, Prasana Diksa, is in the care of her father, originally called K. Patmanathan.
Former federal minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said in his blog, The Zaidgeist, that the case made him feel "angry and very sad".
He said: "It's heart-wrenching to know that a mother has been denied custody of her child simply because her ex-husband, Muhammad Riduan Abdullah (né K. Pathmanathan), converted their daughter, then aged two years, to Islam."
He added: "It has been almost nine years since Indira separated from Riduan, and I expect that the Court of Appeal decision will be upheld by the Federal Court. I ask myself: what kind of country have we become to produce such harsh laws and heartless judges? If Indira had been a Muslim mother, and the former husband did the unilateral conversion of the daughter to say Christianity, would the decision still be the same? Of course not. Indira did not get justice because she is not a Muslim.
"I have made reference to Indira's case in the books I have written, and I will not dwell on the law any further. I just feel sick, thinking how the legal system cannot grant relief to a mother who has been deprived of her daughter for so many years."
He added: "I would like to appeal to all Malaysians who care about this case to start raising funds; not to cover the legal costs of the appeal to the Federal Court, which will be futile, but to make a film about the tragedy suffered by Indira."
