Putrajaya, Malaysia - The National Registration Department (NRD) is only responsible to register a person and not the public authority to determine the person's religion, the Federal Court heard Thursday.
Senior Federal Counsel Datuk Umi Kalthum Abdul Majid said the National Registration Regulations 1999 provides the statutory basis for the NRD to require Lina Joy to produce an order from the Syariah Court to confirm that she had renounced the Islamic religion if she wanted to delete the word "Islam" from her identity card.
She said the request was valid and reasonable as the NRD is not in any position to ascertain the woman's religious status.
The current legal decisions have also consistently held that the question of whether a person is a Muslim or had renounced the faith needs proper interpretation by the Syariah Court, she added.
Umi Kalthum was submitting before a three-member Federal Court bench comprising Chief Justice Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim and Federal Court judges Datuk Alauddin Sheriff and Datuk Richard Malanjum in an appeal against the Court of Appeal's dismissal of Lina's application to delete the word "Islam" from her identity card.
The case arose from the attempts by Lina, 42, who was born Azlina Joy, to change her name and delete the word "Islam" from her IC since 1997 after she renounced Islam and converted to Christianity.
The NRD issued a new IC to her changing the name to Lina Joy but refused to delete the word "Islam" without a Syariah Court order confirming her apostasy.
She took the case to the High Court which ruled on April 23, 2001 that being a Muslim, Lina could not renounce Islam without the consent of the Syariah Court.
Then, on Sept 19 last year, the Court of Appeal, in a 2-1 majority decision, upheld the High Court's ruling.
In her appeal to the Federal Court, she named the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Council, the Malaysian government and the NRD Director-General Datuk Wan Ibrahim Wan Ahmad as respondents.
The apex court Thursday also heard submissions by the Bar Council and two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which are holding watching briefs on the case.
Malik Imtiaz Sarwar for the Bar Council contended that all people in Malaysia, including Muslims and Muslim converts, are entitled to the protection of Article 11(1) of the Federal Constitution.
"The Article guarantees the freedom to profess and practise their religion of choice and this necessarily entails the right to change faith. Such choice cannot be made subject to the discretion of any third party, agency or institution, including courts of law," he said.
He said the freedom to profess a religion is a personal right and cannot be vested in a third party.
"Courts, if called upon, may only declare the religious status of an individual on the basis of what the individual concerned professes," he said.
Malik Imtiaz also submitted that the Syariah Courts have no jurisdiction over people who do not profess Islam.
Consequently, the Syariah Court has no power to declare a person who professes not to be a Muslim as an apostate and such jurisdiction cannot be conferred by written law as such law would not be enacted competently, he said.
Ramdas Tikamdas for the National Human Rights Society (Hakam) submitted that the Federal Constitution only confers limited jurisdiction to the Syariah Court and in that limited jurisdiction the doctrine of apostasy is not included.
"Since the Syariah Court, or for that matter any other Islamic authority, has no constitutionally conferred jurisdiction to deal with apostasy, the NRD's requirement would be a violation of the Constitution," he said.
Women's Aid Organisation (WAO) counsel Meera Samanther submitted that Lina has the right to profess the religion of her choice as guaranteed under Article 11 of the Federal Constitution.
The hearing continues on Monday.