Minor Hindu children forcibly converted to Islam by their Muslim father

Case ID : 45f4ec3 | Location : Perlis, Malaysia | Date of Incident : Mon, 6 July, 2020

Case ID : 45f4ec3

Perlis, Malaysia

6 July, 2020

Minor Hindu children forcibly converted to Islam by their Muslim father

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

In Malaysia, minor Hindu children were converted to Islam by their Muslim father, named M Nagahswaran, without the consent of the mother, Loh Siew Hong. The father was earlier a Hindu, who converted to Islam, and forcibly converted his children, to take custody of the minor children. According to reports, Loh Siew Hong, after enduring months of severe abuse by her husband, filed for divorce from her husband. However, she temporarily lost contact with her children since the accused, M Nagahswaran, took them away and concealed their whereabouts for nearly three years. During this period, Nagahswaran converted from Hinduism to Islam and forcibly converted the minor Hindu children as well, without informing or taking consent from their mother. He did this to strengthen his hold over the children's custody and to prevent Loh from regaining custody, since in Malaysia, granting custody to Muslim children to Hindus is prohibited. After their conversion on 7 July 2020, the minor children, two daughters and a son, were placed under the control of individuals associated with Islamic organisations, where the mother later discovered the children were compelled to attend Islamic classes and wear religious attire despite their Hindu upbringing. She repeatedly attempted to locate them, only to find that they had been moved across states and kept hidden in private care, while continuous efforts were made to normalise their conversion and integrate them into Muslim religious identity. When the mother finally located them, she pursued legal action to secure their return, relying on existing High Court orders that had already granted her sole custody. She also filed a habeas corpus petition after learning that the children were being restricted from seeing her and were under the control of individuals preparing them for religious conversion. The court confirmed that the earlier custody orders remained valid and directed that the children be released immediately into her care, noting that no Shariah orders existed to override the civil court’s authority. Even after being reunited, she faced intense public hostility from pro-Islam and pro-Malay groups who accused her of attempting to remove Muslim children from their faith, despite the fact that the children had practised Hindu customs again upon returning to her household. She insisted that their prior exposure to Islamic instruction did not reflect genuine religious conviction, but rather the result of coercion while under their father’s control. She also sought to nullify the conversions, emphasising that the children had not consented to becoming Muslim, since they were minors. Her legal challenge questioned whether unilateral conversions arranged by a single parent should hold weight in matters involving minors, particularly when carried out to circumvent custody orders.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of - Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary category under this is: Conversion of minor. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. The other sub-category selected here is - Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. This case has been added to the tracker because minor Hindu children were converted to Islam by their Muslim father without the consent of the mother. The father had forcibly converted the minor children to Islam to take custody of the minor children. The father deliberately removed the children from their mother’s care, took them to multiple undisclosed locations, isolated them from their Hindu cultural environment, and then forcibly converted them to Islam. This was done with the calculated objective of manipulating Malaysian legal provisions that prohibits custody of Muslim children to non-Muslim parents. It is important to note here that the victims were minor, which means the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. Minors, due to their young age and lack of maturity, are particularly vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. They may not have the ability to fully understand the implications of converting to another religion, and the Muslim father purposely targeted and exploited this vulnerability of the victims by cutting them off from their mother, family, cultural upbringing, and Hindu identity. The act was not one of spiritual choice but one of strategic exploitation, where the children’s helplessness was weaponised to achieve custodial rights. This act is not merely a parental dispute, it is a premeditated religiously motivated offence, carried out with clear ideological intent. By forcibly isolating the children and immersing them into a different religious framework, the father effectively attempted to erase their Hindu roots and impose a new identity upon them. Such actions demonstrate a deliberate hostility towards the Hindu faith, rooted in religious hostility. This pattern of coercive conversion, especially of minors, stems from deeply ingrained religious animosity in Abrahamic faith, where converting non-Muslims is often valorised and seen as a religious accomplishment, irrespective of the means used. The complete disregard for the mother’s consent, the children’s wellbeing, and the sanctity of their cultural and religious roots reflects a hostility rooted in religious prejudice. Since this case exemplifies coercion, manipulation, isolation, and the strategic use of religion to dispossess Hindu minors of their identity, it is documented here as a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incidents based on when an event occurred or when the victim's ordeal began. Since the minor children were converted on 7 July 2020, the date of the incident has been selected as such.