Malaysian high court refuses to acknowledge religious conversion

[jrtom]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/news/malaysia.php?page=1

The short version: Muslims in Malaysia are subject to a different set of laws than non-Muslims, so (e.g.) "Muslim" appears on their national IDs. Someone who had been raised as a Muslim tried to have her conversion recognized by the national government...and failed.

This is messed up on a couple of different levels, IMAO.

Comments

how to solve this problem?

[amnesiadust.livejournal.com]

Ms. Joy is doing well. I thought apostasy was punishable by death, stoning in fact.

The particular viewpoints taken here do seem to me to be further evidence that a truly pluralistic society, let alone a liberal/Enlightenment society, is impossible when there is an official state religion.

On further consideration, though, I'm not sure what to think about how best to separate church and state, given that everyone by nature has a religion (whether it's Christianity, Hinduism, atheism, or logical positivism) which shapes their views on what the good life is and how it should be treated within the public sphere. I'm wondering what exactly those Enlightenment blokes had in mind regarding how exactly church and state should be separated...

Maybe I should check up on Thomas Jefferson. After all, his epitaph names him as a deep thinker on this subject.

Re: how to solve this problem?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was expecting to read about her stoning myself. :(

Many people would argue that atheism is not a religion. Thank you for including it in your list.

Re: how to solve this problem?

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

A brief reflection: it may be instructive to distinguish between "religion" and "church" in this context. One is a belief system, the other is a corporate entity whose purpose is to perpetuate a belief system. (Or, to generalize it, one is a meme and the other is an organization which propagates the meme.)

Laws, and thus the state, must reflect _some_ kind of shared belief/value system. This is different from saying that (a) they must adhere to the current teachings of a particular organization whose teachings are promulgated by a set of people who are not representative of the entire population, and/or (b) they are subject to control (or their decisions are subject to review) by the leaders of said organization.