The AG's "Interracial Marriage" Quote Was Malay Mail's Mistake
Media's hunger for sensationalism, it seems, has taken over better reason and sense.
By Sadho Ram — 19 Nov 2014, 04:33 PM — Updated almost 10 years ago
Earlier last week, on 11 November, Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail was at the ILKAP National Law Conference 2014, titled Law and Social Order: Current challenges in Malaysia
At the conference, the learned lawyer spoke at length about Malaysia's current challenges in preserving its social order and national harmony.
The sensationalised clickbait headline stated that the AG said "marriages between Malaysians of different races risk harming 'national harmony'". But did he really?
We were shocked at first after reading The Malay Mail article but we decided to take a closer look. We dug up AGC's website and found a transcript of Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail's full speech.
In the lengthy speech, there's a section called Child custody cases, where the AG speaks in detail about how:
"Interracial marriages have given rise to a new conflict between civil law and Syariah law in relation to the unilateral conversion as well as custody issues of minor children where only one spouse converts to Islam."
agc.gov.myWhile highlighting how "apart from these legal battles, there's also claims of racial discrimination", he clearly stats that:
"In this regard, the failure of the converting spouses to resolve the family arrangements prior to conversion and in fact, attempting to use the different jurisdictions of the civil and Syariah courts to their advantage, jeopardizes not only family harmony but potentially national harmony."
agc.gov.myMeaning? He didn't put the blame on inter-racial marriages. But, in fact, on those people who fail to resolve their family arrangements prior to converting to Islam, deliberately use the different jurisdictions of the civil and Syariah courts to their advantage.
According to the AG's written speech, he further stated that:
"Consequentially, the integrity of the Royal Malaysia Police and the Attorney General’s Chambers is also called into question due to the issue of enforcement of conflicting court orders."
"As stated earlier, if the integrity of law enforcement agencies is compromised, it will be detrimental to their ability to garner the respect of the public which is fundamental to their ability to carry out their duties."
Ending the Child custody cases section, the good lawyer also noted that while amendments were proposed to the Law Reform, they, however, remain pending. Here's the AG's full speech.
"In 2009, amendments were proposed to the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, the Islamic Family Law (Federal Territories) Act 1984 and the Administration of Islamic Law (Federal Territories) Act 1993 to ensure that issues like child support and child custody would be determined by the court in which the marriage was registered. These amendments however remain pending."
agc.gov.myMeanwhile, it seems that the The Malay Mail article no longer exists on its page. 15 minutes after publishing this story, the Malay Mail article appears to be have been removed. Check here.
However, 30 minutes after publishing this SAYS story, we have just found out that The Malay Mail has republished the said article with new edits, acknowledging the retraction and issuing an apology. You can check the retraction in this link to their Facebook post