Justice Wan Fadhilah Nor Wan Idris, in a ruling delivered online, said the 47-year-old woman’s suit was “not a case where she was never a Muslim”.

She ordered the woman to pay the respondents – the Negeri Sembilan Islamic religious council, the national registration department (JPN) and the government – a global sum of RM4,000 as costs.

Her lawyer S Karthigesan said the decision implied that his client would have to go to the shariah courts to renounce her religion.

“Our position is that she was never a Muslim,” he told FMT, adding that an appeal would be filed.

Counsel AR Thamayanthy also represented the woman in the proceedings. Lawyer Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar acted for the state religious authority, and senior federal counsel Amalina Zainal Mokhtar appeared for JPN and the government.

In 2024, then Judicial Commissioner Haldar Abdul Aziz, in striking out the suit, ruled that the civil courts had no power to hear the woman’s case as the matter fell within the shariah courts jurisdiction.

However, the Court of Appeal last year reinstated the woman’s originating summons, and directed the High Court to hear the merits of the case and determine whether it concerned a person who was never a Muslim or a renunciation of the faith.

In the suit, the woman alleged that her father, after embracing Islam, unilaterally converted her when she was four years old.

The woman, now a mother of two, said she was raised by her maternal aunt and had never recited the Muslim declaration of faith – the kalimah shahadah – nor practised the Islamic way of life.

She was seeking a declaration that she was never a Muslim, and wanted JPN to remove the word “Islam” from her identity card.