Dear Sir/ Madam,

First, we kind to inform you that Syariah Court only has a jurisdiction over Muslims. It has been stated in List II, 9th Schedule of Federal Constitution.

With reference to the above, that is related to an out wedlock child, if the mother of the child is Muslim, then the child is also Muslim. On the other hand, if the mother of the child is not a Muslim but their only illegitimate Muslim father, then the child is not a Muslim. This is because in Islam, the illegitimate child has no legal relationship (nasab) to his father. Therefore, the mother has an absolute right of custody over the child.

Regarding to change a name of a child from Malay name to Chinese name, kindly inform that it was under the jurisdiction of National Registration Department of Malaysia. The Syariah Court has only a jurisdiction to determine the religious status of a person whether he or she is a Muslim or not. For your further information, in Islam, any Muslim was not obliged to use Malay/ Arab name.  Any Muslim has a right to choose any name which carries a good meaning regardless in whatever language that he or she wants to use including Chinese names. There have many Chinese Muslims who use Chinese names such as Ann Wang Seng, Zheng He (Cheng Ho), Wang Dai Yu and others.