“Azalina, if all men are ‘man’ enough to own up, we won’t have mothers deprived of their children for years and maybe never see them.
“That’s why I beseeched (the) ministers and Attorney-General (Mohamed Apandi Ali) to be ‘man’ enough to do the right thing and prevent unilateral conversion.
“Unfortunately they are all the same: not man enough to do the right thing for the child and mother,” he said in a series of Tweets today.
Zaid, who is now a member of the DAP, was commenting on Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman Said’s statement in the Dewan Rakyat early this morning.
According to a report in Malaysiakini, Azalina had said men whose marriages had ended because they had converted to Islam, should be “man enough” to dissolve their union in a civil court instead of abusing their newly obtained Muslim status.
“The (LRA) encourages them to be gentlemen. If they are ‘anak jantan’ (man enough), divorce properly,” she was quoted saying.
Although Azalina was speaking in the context of divorces between non-Muslim spouses and their recently converted partners, Zaid couldn’t help but point out her hypocrisy.
This shows, according to him, that the government itself had abandoned efforts to ensure justice for non-Muslim mothers separated from their children who were converted to Islam without their consent.
He referred to Umno minister Nazri Aziz’s explanation as to why the government, at the last minute, decided to remove the proposed clause 88A from the amendments to the LRA, which was tabled and passed in the Dewan Rakyat at 12.50am today.
Clause 88A states that the religion of the child should remain the same despite the conversion of one of the parents.
“Nazri said we have to amend the Federal Constitution in order to introduce this clause,” Zaid told FMT.
“This is because of the Federal Court’s decision in the Subashini (Rajasingam v Saravanan Thangathoray) case. But when the parliament passes a law, then the law will override the court’s decision.
“So this talk about amending the constitution is just a bluff, it’s just an excuse by Barisan Nasional ministers who have no stomach to do the right thing.”
He also claimed the real reason the government removed clause 88A was because it was afraid of a backlash from PAS and the extremists who Zaid labeled as the “Talibans”.
“But it is the responsibility of the government to protect, and to be fair to the children and the mother. That’s what I have been saying all along,” he added.
Unilateral conversion bill: You have sinned, Kula tells govt