On February 25th, 2021, Malaysia’s highest court, The Palace of Justice, unanimously ruled against the Islamic rule banning attempts at gay sex in the state of Selangor – officially making history and carving a path for LGBT+ rights in Malaysia.
Malaysia consists of a 60% Muslim population (close to two million people), this means that their dual-track legal system allows Islamic criminal and family laws to be as applicable and relevant to civilians as their civil laws. This has caused same-sex acts to be deemed illegal throughout the country. Although convictions are rare, gay Malaysian men can still be imprisoned for up to 20 years under Section 377—a law that’s banned gay sex since the British colonial era. Therefore, the Islamic provision further deeming gay sex “against the order of nature”—civil law already ruled gay sex to be illegal.
According to CNN, this was the argument that the Malaysian man—who remains unnamed to preserve his privacy—used in court to challenge the provision. He was arrested back in 2018 for “attempting gay sex” in Selangor. However, he was only one man of the 11 people arrested under the same charge after a raid at a private residence. In fact, five of the group plead guilty and were therefore sentenced to prison time, fines, and caning—a physical punishment where a cane is used to hit a person’s bare body part repeatedly. However, the man involved in the legal challenge had denied the allegations. That same year though, in 2018, a transgender woman was attacked, and two women were caned of “attempting lesbian sex”—against the Islamic law.
The court agreed with the man, ruling that the Islamic provision was unconstitutional and that Selangor didn’t have the power to enforce this act. Furthermore, chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat wrote that the state’s power to enact such rulings was subject to constitutional limits, and thus, it was stricken from Selangor’s laws.
Although not all states have followed suit, this serves as a monumental first step in a path to equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community in Malaysia. Coming from a Muslim family, I hope this remarkable decision serves to encourage other countries under Islamic rule to begin their movements as well, and through time, grant more rights toward LGBT+ people in their countries.