Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - A Christian group on Friday welcomed a decision by Malaysia's Islamic authorities to drop their claim on the body of a man whose religion was unclear when he died.
The Selangor state's Islamic Religious Council said late Thursday that its investigations showed there was "overwhelming" evidence that Rayappan, a van driver who died Nov. 29, was not a Muslim, reversing its earlier stand that he had converted to Islam.
Rayappan's family said the 71-year-old man had indeed converted to Islam in 1990, but that he returned to Roman Catholicism in 1999 without informing Islamic authorities.
The Christian Federation of Malaysia said in a statement Friday that it was glad "good sense has prevailed" and that the Rayappan Anthony's family did not have to suffer psychological trauma in a tussle to claim his body for burial.
The group urged the government to "find a transparent mechanism to resolve such issues through dialogue and to protect the rights of citizens to profess or revert to their religion without intimidation from outside parties."
Both the Islamic Religious Council and the man's family filed petitions separately in the civil and Islamic courts to claim his body. But a legal resolution became redundant when the council agreed the family was right.
"With this, we withdrew the case from the court ... and will not make any other claim," council chairman Mohamed Adzib Mohamad Isa said.
"I hope the matter is solved and we don't think the people will view us negatively because we make the decision based on the existing facts and not emotion."
Rayappan is expected to be buried on Saturday after a mass on Friday.
"I fought till the end. I did not manage to kiss my father goodbye when he died but now I am satisfied everything has been sorted out," said Rayappan's daughter, Mary.
The council's decision doused the latest controversy over minority rights in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where decades-long multiracial harmony has come into question over concerns that Islam, the official religion, is diminishing other faiths.
Many Buddhists, Christians and Hindus in Malaysia feel the constitution and courts do not sufficiently safeguard their rights. But Muslim leaders have warned that giving minorities concessions would erode the status of Islam.
Malay Muslims make up about 60 percent of Malaysia's population, while most of the rest are Buddhists, Hindus or Christians from the ethnic Chinese and Indian communities.
The case comes nearly a year after a national debate over the body of commando Maniam Moorthy, a former Hindu who was buried by Islamic authorities after the Islamic court ruled he converted to Islam before his death.
Moorthy had never told his family of the conversion, and the High Court said it had no jurisdiction to hear his wife's appeal in the case.