Muslim women who share a secret love - mereka semakin berani dan kurang ajar
Islam, rather than Western culture’s focus on sexual freedom,
shapes day-to-day reality for a third of the world’s Anglicans. Malay
women who convert to Christianity are forced to live a double-life.
KATRIN ARNHOLZ spoke to one of them.
Under Kamariah’s* photo on her Malaysian identification card is her
ethnicity. Right under that her gender, and to the left: Islam. But the
28-year-old woman with the angular eyeglasses and the broad smile is
Christian. She belongs to the largest ethnic group in Malaysia—the
Malays. According to the official census, Malays number 65 per cent of
the population. In Malaysia, Kamariah says, a Malay is a Muslim by
definition. “A Malay is a Muslim. Full stop,†she says. Few dare to go
public if they convert to Christianity.
One man who has publicly converted is the well-known yachtsman,
Azhar Mansor, who in 1999 sailed around the world in 190 days without
the aid of an engine. The main mast of his yacht broke around Cape
Horn. He managed, nevertheless, to reach the Faulkland Islands to
repair the mast. What happened on the way between the cape and the
islands is subject to speculation. The internet is full of questions by
Muslims as to whether Mansor – who no longer lives in Malaysia – is
really converted. And there is much discussion among Christians as
well. Kamariah’s version is that Mansor, about to drown in the sea, was
saved by a dolphin, and that Jesus appeared to him soon after.
Lina Joy did not intend to become famous when she requested
officially to leave Islam in 2001. She succeeded in changing her name,
Azlina Jailani, to Lina Joy, but the government’s National Registration
Department refused to delete ‘Islam’ from her identification card. For
such decisions, it is not the government departments that are
responsible, but the Syariah Court – the court in Malaysia which
supervises Muslims’ adherence to Islam. To the disadvantage of Lina
Joy, the judge ruled, ‘As the plaintiff is a Malay, she is subjected to
the laws of Islam until she dies’.
