Hindu minors converted to Islam while mother healed from abuse [ Perlis, Malaysia]

[ Reported as seen]

Loh Siew Hong, a 35-year-old Hindu Chinese woman’s children were converted to Islam by her ex-husband. She was granted custody of her children on February 21 this year following a three-year legal battle. She is now contesting the forced conversion of her children to Islam.

Some traditionalist Muslims argue that now that the youth have converted, there is no turning back. The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, an Islamist group that forms part of the national government, has advised Loh not to dispute the conversion. The punishment for renunciation of Islam is death.

Loh is encountering hostility in her efforts to re-convert her children to their original faith.

Loh Siew Hong filed for divorce and separated in March 2019 from her husband after years of domestic violence at the hands of her Indian-origin spouse Nagahswaran Muniandy.

Loh was thereafter hospitalised for a lengthy period as a result of injuries inflicted by her ex-husband. Her children were taken away by her ex-husband, who had by that time converted to Islam.

During her hospital stay, her ex-husband Muniandy relocated her son, aged 10, and two twin daughters, aged 14, to the State of Perlis where he converted them to Islam with the help of an Islamic NGO. Since the children were minors and Loh Siew Hong’s consent was not sought, the conversion was considered “unilateral”.

Hong failed to trace her children and sought the help of the police.

According to a report of the  MalayMail, in December 2019, she obtained interim custody of her children pending her divorce, but her court case was delayed when Malaysia went into Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020; she finally obtained an order granting her full and sole custody in March 2021.

Meanwhile, Muniandy was caught and sentenced to prison in Kelantan for a drug-related offence. The NGO refused Loh Siew Hong’s request to meet her children. The kids were then relocated to a children’s home in Kedah.

Loh Siew Hong filed a habeas corpus application before the Kuala Lumpur High Court on February 13 of this year. Following the submission of the application, the children were placed in the care of a ‘neutral’ party, the Perlis Welfare Department.

Hong stated in her application that a female Islamic preacher named Nazirah Nanthakumari Abdullah confined her children at the Hidayah Centre Foundation in Bayan Lepas, Penang, Malaysia and would not allow her to meet them. The Islamic NGO instead transferred her children to a children’s home.

In the court order, Justice Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah noted that Loh was accorded the custody of her 3 minor children by the Kuala Lumpur High Court in December 2019 (interim ex-parte order) and in March 2021 (final order).

He stated, “The court orders should not be treated with impunity. I allow the application as per enclosure one (writ of habeas corpus)…The three children are to be released forthwith into the sole custody, care, and control of the applicant.”

Loh’s case is not an islolated case, there are several others in which the wife is tortured before her children are converted unilaterally by the husband.