``Malays are second-class citizens in this country when it comes to matters of faith,'' says her lawyer Haris Mohammed Ibrahim. Anyone trying to leave Islam faces loss of inheritance, family support and work, and banishment to a legal limbo where the religious label on one's identity card becomes a life-defining fact.
Less dramatic but more everyday examples of Islamic law intruding on ordinary people's lives - often to a startling degree - are rife in a country which likes to portray itself as a modern, moderate Muslim state.
Take the case of Lina Joy, who has for years been trying to get the word ``Islam'' removed from her ID card so that she can remarry, to a non-Muslim. Her case is in the Court of Appeal and no one will predict her chances of success.
Until the recent morality raids, such cases were seen as exceptions, regrettable perhaps but about which little could be done. But the outrage spreading among Muslim parents who now warn their children about the religious police is sparking new civil actions.
It used to be normal to be hypocritical, one Muslim housewife confides. It was better to go along in public with the rules of Muslim behavior - as interpreted by the state - and to think what one liked in private, she says.
Read the whole thing.
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