The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) expressed concern over the decision given on 27 August 2019 by the Malaysian High Court that a fatwa issued against the women’s organisation, Sisters in Islam, should be referred to a Sharia court.
The High Court used as a basis Article 121(1A) of the Federal Constitution, which states that secular courts do not have jurisdiction over matters pertaining to Islam.
The ICJ called on the Malaysian authorities to ensure that custom, tradition, and religion should not be used as a justification to undermine human rights, including women’s human rights.
In 2014, the Selangor Fatwa Council issued a fatwa declaring the Sisters in Islam a “deviant organisation”.
For many years, Sisters in Islam has been promoting more egalitarian interpretations of Islamic laws with the aim of ending discrimination against women and achieving equality in the Muslim family.
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“For women to fully exercise their religious freedom, they must be able to retain or adopt the religion of their choice, and they must be able to continue belonging to this religion without being discriminated against within the religion,” said Emerlynne Gil, ICJ’s senior international legal adviser.
The ICJ stressed that under international law, states have an obligation to protect people who are prevented from exercising their religious freedom by private actors, such as their own religious communities.
“The Malaysian government, including the judiciary, has the obligation to protect groups like Sisters in Islam when they face persecution from within their religious communities for propounding alternative views about their religion,” said Emerlynne Gil.
Furthermore, the ICJ had previously underscored in a 2019 briefing paper on the challenges to freedom of religion or belief in Malaysia, the tensions emerging from jurisdictional disputes between civil courts, which apply federal and state laws, and Sharia courts, which apply Islamic laws.
In 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, in reviewing the performance of Malaysia, voiced its own concern over “the existence of a parallel legal system of civil law and multiple versions of Sharia law, which have not been harmonised in accordance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (
The Cedaw Committee concluded that this leads to a gap in the protection of women against discrimination, including on the basis of their religion”.
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All Islamic issues in Malaysia are automatically referred to the Syariah Court & the civil justice system has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the verdict. So how can there be impartiality if religion is used as the base of all the judgement & which also discriminates against women?
Stewart Sak are you a Christian? If I say Jesus Christ is not God, does it contradict to Christian theology? How could I say you are Muslim if you don’t belief in hadith which is one of the authentic reference of Islam.
Kamal Badri I do understand the hadith in Islam but I find that it’s not favourable to women in the decision-making process. In my humble opinion, justice should be served basing on the equal rights of both men & women in the community.
Msia got use the principle of stare decisis, whereby a decision made by the “ most top Court” , federal kan..? ..then the rest of other courts have to follow too?
Why a need to protect them? They have done good jobs for helping women but they can’t make ‘fatwas’ based on their interpretation.
Bravo SII. Hooray!