On Lina Joy

Excerpts from a couple of profound viewpoints on the Lina Joy case.

The Economist, June 2nd, page 28:

In many places, constitutional guarantees of liberty are undermined by laws constraining religious belief. Indonesians, for example, are also obliged to state their religion on their identity cards and to choose between just six officially recognised faiths. The governor of the state of Rajasthan, in India, is being pressed by the state assembly to approve a law punishing conversion from Hinduism. Constraints on individuals' rights to choose their beliefs are usually backed up by claims that religions are somehow “under threat”: a curious lack of faith—in faith itself.

Farish Noor, June 21st:

In the end, however, cases like Revathi's and Lina Joy's revolve around the fundamental freedom to believe in what one believes, and to be recognised as such. The Muslim majority in Malaysia are not Muslims because their identity cards and passports tell them they are, but because they simply are, and exist, as Muslims.

The time has come for the laws of the land to recognise that being Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist in Malaysia has little to do with paperwork and legal technicalities, but in the more fundamental nature of existential being itself. Until then however, those trapped in the legal chasm where Revathi and Lina Joy are in at the present are the unfortunate victims of a legal system at odds with itself and which oddly defend freedom of belief for some and yet not for others...