Word: malaysian
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...colony of Malaya gained independence from the British. Her father was Christian, her mother came from a Hindu family, but they both officially converted to Islam, the religion practiced by Malaysia's majority Malays. Yet Revathi does not feel welcome in her ethnically and religiously diverse homeland. According to Malaysian law, Muslims can only marry other Muslims. Revathi, who was actually raised in the Hindu faith, had fallen in love with a Hindu man. But because of her parents' earlier conversion, she was deemed a Muslim and a judge refused to change her religious status. Revathi's marriage was never...
...Islam is the religion of the federation and that freedom of religion is guaranteed.) Abdullah told TIME, "We are not a secular state, but neither are we a theocracy." But such hedging seems unlikely to satisfy all constituencies. Liow Tiong Lai, the head of the youth wing of the Malaysian Chinese Association, part of the usually cohesive National Front coalition, asserted that Malaysia was indeed a secular nation. Bernard Giluk Dompok, a minister in Abdullah's Cabinet who is Christian, concurs. "If we define Malaysia as an Islamic state," he told TIME, "the implication is that non-Muslims...
...judicial independence and integrity. Their protest was galvanized by a video clip that appeared to show a well-known lawyer helping fix top bench appointments. (The government says it will set up a royal commission to investigate the video.) "I used to be proud to say I was a Malaysian lawyer," says Karpal Singh, a prominent human-rights lawyer. "But now? The system is getting worse...
...global-entertainment menus. But Malaysia's legitimate CD producers feel the squeeze too. The government has encouraged legitimate digital production (which has expanded from one optical-disc plant in 1996 to around 50 today) as part of the country's effort to move up the technology ladder. Malaysian factories churn out an estimated 315 million CDs a year, worth $300 million. But producers who respect intellectual property rights complain that they can't compete with those...
Piracy is also crippling the local film and music industries. Employment at music-production studios has dropped a third since 1996, and many artists are holding back new releases until their rights are protected. Malaysian filmmakers released seven movies last year, compared with 18 in 1995, and box-office receipts are down 49% over the past two years. CD pirates "are like leeches, sucking the life out of the film industry," reports the Video and Film Industry Association of Malaysia...