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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's minister in charge of law said it is up to the prime minister to settle the issue of whether civil or Sharia courts take precedence in legal cases involving Muslims and non-Muslims, a report said on Friday.
Malaysia's civil courts operate in parallel to Sharia courts for Muslims in areas of family law including divorce, child custody and inheritance.
In a string of legal cases involving Muslims and non-Muslim spouses who have been forced apart by Islamic religious officials, Sharia court judgements based on Islamic jurisdiction have always been upheld.
"The matter is for the prime minister to consult with the component parties in Barisan Nasional. I will also refer the matter to the Attorney-General," Nazri Aziz, minister in the prime minister's department, said in The Star.
Barisan National is the ruling coalition.
Nazri's comments come after Malaysia's top secular court said this week that parliament must resolve the jurisdiction tussle between civil courts and Sharia courts as current laws need to be reviewed and updated.
"These are not matters that the (civil) courts can solve as the courts owe their jurisdiction to statutes," Federal Court judge Abdul Hamid Mohamad was quoted saying by the paper.
"It is for the legislature to step in, to decide as a matter of policy what should be the solution and legislate accordingly," he said in his judgement on an inheritance dispute involving Muslims.
More than 60 percent of Malaysia's 27 million people are Muslim Malays and Islam is the official religion under the country's constitution.
But while the constitution defines the ethnic majority Malays as Muslims it also guarantees freedom of religion.
Minority Chinese and Indians are mostly Buddhists, Hindus or Christians.
In a recent decision, the Federal Court rejected a woman's bid for legal recognition as a Christian after she renounced Islam.
Born a Muslim, Lina Joy, waged a decade-long battle to have the word "Islam" removed from her national identity card. But the Federal Court threw out her case and said only the Sharia court can legally certify her conversion.
Lawyers, rights groups and academics criticised the decision, saying it had undermined the country's secular constitution, which guarantees the freedom of religious practice.
- AFP/so
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