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

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.