Apostasy, marriage, and jurisdiction in Lina Joy: where was CEDAW?

Examines the 2007 case of Lina Joy, a Muslim woman in Malaysia who had converted to Christianity but whom the courts would not allow to remove the designation "Islam" from her government identity card, thwarting her desire to marry a Christian man. The continuing influence of the religious principles of Islamic Shari'a in Malaysian civil courts is documented. Ways that the courts' decisions violated Joy's constitutional right to religious freedom & the core principles laid out in the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are discussed. K. Hyatt Stewart