Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Malaysia is an Islamic state but protects the rights of ethnic minorities, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said Tuesday (July 17th), amid concerns over a spate of religious conflicts affecting ethnic Indian and Chinese.
Najib dismissed concerns that the country is moving away from its secular status toward greater Islamization, saying predominantly Muslim Malaysia has always been governed according to Islamic principles.
"We have never, never been secular because secular by the Western definition means a separation of Islamic principles in the way we govern the country," he told reporters after opening an international Islamic conference.
"Islam is the official religion, and we are an Islamic state," he said. "We have always been driven by our adherence to the fundamentals of Islam."
However, Najib said the federal constitution guarantees religious freedom and other rights to ethnic Chinese and Indians, who are mostly Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.
"Islamic state does not mean we don't respect the rights of the non-Muslims. The non-Muslims have the rights, and we protect the rights of non-Muslims," he said.
"We don't want to be stereotyped into a Western prism of secular and non-secular."
Activists say a string of recent religious disputes have ended in favor of Muslims _ who comprise nearly 60 percent of the population _ and strained ethnic relations in the multicultural nation, which has enjoyed racial peace for nearly four decades.
Ethnic Chinese account for about one-quarter of Malaysia's 26 million people, and Indians comprise about 10 percent.
In a recent high-profile case that raised concerns about religious rights, a woman who was born to Muslim parents failed to get the country's highest civil court to recognize her conversion to Christianity.
In another case, an ethnic Indian woman who was born a Muslim but married a Hindu man was separated from her husband and forced to spend six months in an Islamic rehabilitation center.
In April, Selangor Islamic officials forcibly separated a Hindu man from his Muslim wife of 21 years, and their six children. He won custody of his children, but the couple could not live together legally and decided to separate.
Under Malaysia's Islamic or Shariah laws, anyone born into a Muslim family cannot legally convert to another faith and anyone marrying a Muslim must convert to Islam. Muslims who renege on their faith are often sent to rehabilitation camps.