KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 10, 2008): Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak
said today the disruption of the Bar Council's open forum on conversion to Islam
was "expected" and blamed the council for being "stubborn" in not listening to
advice from the authorities.
Commenting on Saturday's forum which had to be ended prematurely due to a noisy
protest by about 500 people outside the venue in Lebuh Pasar Besar here, Najib
said: "We expected this to happen and we had already told them that holding an
open forum on this issue would invoke this sort of reaction from some groups,
but they were stubborn."
"We live in a multiracial country and we have been able to live peacefully so
far because we have been tolerant, respectful of the sensitivities of all races
and by adhering to the tenets of the Federal Constitution.
"If we dispute these basic ideals, it will definitely evoke reaction from other
groups. So if we were to upset this, it will evoke disagreement which can affect
our peace and harmony," he said, after opening the Bumiputera Real Estate
Convention and Exhibition 2008.
Meanwhile, Bar Council president Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said the forum would
not have been a big hoo-ha had the title of the discussion been more
"Muslim-friendly".
She said the lawyers were trying to find a solution for family members affected
by the conversion of one family member to Islam due to the conflicts relating to
jurisdiction between the syariah and civil courts.
"Apart from legal issues, we must focus on humanitarian issues. It is important
that we realise that R. Subashini, T. Saravanan and S. Shamala are real people.
So, these are humanitarian issues we are dealing with," she said at the opening
of the forum on Saturday.
The forum, titled "Conversion to Islam: Article 121(1a) of the Federal
Constitution: Subashini and Shamala Revisited," attended by about 200
participants including the media, was originally scheduled to take place from
8.30am to 1pm.
Demonstrators gathered in front of the Bar Council secretariat building chanted
Allahu Akbar, carrying placards and banners and shouted for it to stop. They
were representatives of Muslim NGOs and political parties, including the Muslim
Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM), Peninsular Malay Students Federation (GPMS),
Muslim Organisations in Defence of Islam (Pembela), Malaysian Islamic
Propagation and Welfare Organisation (Pekida), Alumni of Umno Club Overseas
Students, PAS Youth and Parti Keadilan Rakyat.
Due to the growing tension, the police advised the organisers to stop the forum,
which had started at 8.40am, earlier than scheduled and Ambiga announced that
the forum would wrap up at 10am.
However, 25 minutes later, a group of protestors led by GPMS vice-president Jais
Abdul Karim and Pembela member Zulkifli Noordin, who is also PKR Kulim-Bandar
Baru MP, accompanied by the police, marched into the auditorium on the 1st floor
of the building where the forum was held.
At that time, former Suhakam commissioner Dr Mehrun Siraj was giving her views
but was told off rudely by one of those in the group, who said he represented
Umno, that she was conspiring with the un-Islamic goings-on in the forum.
When the group became vociferous, Ambiga declared the forum closed at 10am.
Earlier, the forum heard eyewitness accounts from two women whose lives were
affected by the conversion of their fathers to Islam and a spontaneous sharing
from a German woman who was a Muslim convert.
The first was a young Chinese woman whose father embraced Islam to marry an
Iranian Muslim. The second was an older Indian woman, a devout Christian, whose
father married a Malay Muslim and the family underwent conflict with religious
authorities when her father died.
The German married a Malaysian Malay in England and was converted to Islam by
his family when they moved here, only to be divorced and abandoned after 10
years. Her second marriage to a Malay ended in divorce after six years and after
that she was a single mother raising three sons without any help from her
ex-husbands.
The second session involved a panel discussion of the custody battle between
Subashini and former husband Saravanan or Mohd Shafi Saravanan Abdullah; and
Shamala and former husband Dr Jeyaganesh who converted one of their sons to
Islam.
The panel consisted of lawyers Mohd Haniff Khatri Abdullah (counsel for Mohd
Shafi), K. Shanmuga (for Subashini) and Ravi Nekoo (for Shamala).
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