Supremacy of the Constitution

I must first applaud the recent decision by the Federal Court especially from the learned decision of Judge Datuk Abdul Hamid Mohamad who said that the civil court was the right forum because non-Muslims could not commence action or appear in syariah courts. As such any disputes between a Muslim and a non-Muslim family and religious matters should be settled in a civil court.

The reason he mooted the idea was that the non Muslim cannot be present to defend themselves in the syariah court and that it is not the function of the civil courts to review laws passed by parliament and state assemblies. The function of the court is to apply and interpret the law. An interesting observation his Lordship made was that it is the legislature to decide which issues fell under the jurisdiction of the civil court and syariah court.

His Lordship also observed that he was confronted again by the issue of conflict of jurisdiction between civil and syariah courts, a problem that arose and had become more serious over the last two decades. As such, he was tempted to take a fresh look at the jurisdiction issue from a broad perspective since the federal constitution was now 50 years old and had the opportunity to review 46 other judgments from 1970 to last year. His Lordship strongly felt that there must be laws to vest jurisdiction in the High Court and the syariah court. The syariah courts will have no jurisdiction if the the state legislature did not pass an enactment to give them the power.

I have not heard a bold statement for such a long time until today. It is definitely a matter to be applaud. Glad to know that the Constitution is supreme.