Court dismisses appeal against fatwa declaring SIS 'deviant'

Court dismisses appeal against fatwa declaring SIS 'deviant'


The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against a Selangor fatwa that labelled Sisters in Islam (SIS) as a deviant group.

The three-member bench chaired by Has Zanah Mehat, in a 2-1 majority decision today, dismissed the appeal by the women’s rights group.

Has Zanah constituted the majority decision, with panel member Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali. M Gunalan made the dissenting decision.

The fatwa prepared by the Selangor State Fatwa Committee and subsequently gazetted by the Selangor government on July 31, 2014, states that SIS Forum, individuals, organisations and institutions adopting ideologies of liberalism and pluralism are deviant and against the teaching of Islam, is disproportionate and unconstitutional.

The appeal by SIS is against the decision of the Civil Bench of the High Court in Kuala Lumpur on June 24, 2016, which dismissed the judicial review filing by SIS against a Selangor religious authority’s fatwa labelling the group as deviant.

In reading out the majority verdict this morning, Ruzima ruled that only the Syariah Court has the exclusive jurisdiction to determine the issue of the fatwa, and that SIS should have raised the fatwa issue before the state religious court, rather than with the civil court.