An article we published in June called "Muslim women who share a secret love' about closet Malay converts to Christianity, has become our most popular story on record as a political controversy erupts in Malaysia over the status of Muslim converts in that country.
The article, commissioned by us from the German freelance writer Katrin Arnholz, was read by over 35,000 people this year. Our next most popular article about the possibility that Moore College may buy the UTS Ku-ring-gai campus was read by a tenth of that number.
Malaysia's New Strait Times reports that claims Muslims are converting to Christianity by the hundreds of thousands has caused much unrest amongst some Muslim groups.
It is appears that in this context our article was posted on the UMNO-REFORM political blogsite, generating much heat in Malaysia.
The implication that there might be "secret Christians' living as Muslims obviously fired up the Malay blogosphere. Much of the debate was conducted in Bahasa, but one such commentator wrote in English about our article:
"It is about Datuk Azhar Mansor (who allegedly converted to Christianity) and Lina Joy."
"It is not so much about the story or about morons converting and succumbing to the wishes of Western Imperialism," the blogger wrote, "but rather how simplistic Malays (those running the Umno-Reform blogsite) fall for stories written by a Christian Fundamentalist website."
"If you ask me if Amat, or Azhar, or Hamidi, or Lina or Sharifah want to convert, there is nothing the system can do about it. But just dont highlight their cases. What we don't know doesn't really matter. (Say 2,000 Malays converted to Christian from say 20 millions others, negligible). My point is that Christan fundamentalist groups are abundant especially after globalisation nothing new and dont lose sleep over it just strenghten your religion."
Katrin's article is now cited as a key reference for Wikipedia's entry on the "status of religious freedom in Malaysia'.
Wikipedia writes:
"Muslims who wish to convert from Islam face severe obstacles. For Muslims, particularly ethnic Malays, the right to leave the Islamic faith and adhere to another religion is a controversial question, and in practice it is very difficult for Muslims to change religions. The legal process of conversion is unclear; in practice it is very difficult for Muslims to change their religion legally… Many Muslims who have converted to Christianity lead “double lives”, hiding their new faith from friends and family."
