A Chinese Malaysian who was given to a Malay Muslim couple in a mix-up at the hospital where he was born is risking a prison sentence for renouncing Islam after a chance reunion with his real family.

Eight years after learning his true identity Zulhaidi Omar wants to adopt the religion of his natural parents: Buddhism. But he is still officially a Malay which means he must, by law, be a Muslim. To convert to another faith would mean committing the grave crime of apostasy.

Apart from the pain and confusion inflicted on the two families, the case now threatens to get tangled up in Malaysia’s sensitive religious politics.

Throughout his childhood Mr Omar felt himself completely different from everyone around him. His parents and siblings had dark features while he was pale. He was teased at school for his Chinese eyes.

Then one day in 1998, when he was 21, he noticed a Chinese woman staring at him in the supermarket where he worked. She returned several times and then brought an elderly couple into the shop. They also looked him over intently before mustering the courage to talk to him. The couple were convinced that he was their son and persuaded him to take DNA tests that proved the remarkable truth.

Zulhaidi Omar was a changeling, mixed up at birth with another couple’s baby. Not only were the two infants from different parents, they were of different races — the child given to a Malay couple was really the son of Chinese Malaysians, Teo Ma Long and his wife, Lim Sik Hai.

For 21 years the two families lived a few miles apart in the town of Batu Pahat, bringing up children with skin, eyes and features completely different from their own.

To Mr Teo it was obvious within a month that the dark-skinned child that came home from the hospital was not his; Mrs Lim was the victim of rumours because of her son’s non-Chinese appearance.

They went back to the hospital with the child, but it insisted there had been no error. “We sensed that something was amiss because the baby was darker and did not look like any of us,” Mr Teo said. “We went back to the hospital to check if there had been a mistake. But they insisted that he was our child. So we brought him up as one of our own, although we knew our actual son was out there somewhere.” The Malay child was christened Tian Fa. He grew up to marry a Chinese woman and inherit the family business. He still regards himself as Mr Teo’s son.

Mr Omar was less lucky. “My Malay father left us when I was 3,” he says. “My mother remarried, but I could not get along with my stepfather so I left. I took on odd jobs such as waiting at tables and working at a car wash to support myself throughout my secondary school.”

It was while he was studying business administration that he began noticing the Chinese woman who could not take her eyes off him in the supermarket where he worked part-time.

“The girl who was always looking at me was actually my elder sister. She suspected that I was her brother because of my striking resemblance to our father,” he said. “They came to look for me three times and, from our conversations, they were convinced that I was their son. I agreed to go for a DNA test and the results confirmed that they were indeed my biological parents.”

Mr Omar and Mr Teo have now told their story to try to press their case that Mr Omar should be allowed to change his religion.

It is an intensely charged story in a country where religious and ethnic relations are at a delicate balance. The Government promotes positive discrimination on behalf of Malays, who make up just over half the population, and many Chinese reluctantly accept that as a price worth paying to reduce the antiChinese resentment evident in other parts of SouthEast Asia.

Malaysia is a secular state, but apostasy is a crime and in recent years no Muslim has been allowed to abandon Islam in favour of another religion.

If Mr Omar is to be allowed to convert he may at the very least require an official ac-knowledgement from the Batu Pahat hospital that it mixed up the babies. But the hospital has no records of births in 1978, so the family is considering whether to sue.

“Under the federal constitution, everybody is allowed the freedom to choose his own religion but Zulhaidi was never given that chance,” Michael Tay, of the Malaysian Chinese Association, said. “We will try the diplomatic method, first through negotiations with state officials and the hospital where he was born. If that fails, then we will have to seek legal recourse.

“They are not interested in monetary compensation, but the father wants his son to regain his rightful identity.”

“I never stopped looking for my biological son,” Mr Teo said. “Somehow, I knew he was alive and well. When our daughter found Zulhaidi, I knew this was the son we had been looking for.”

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Source: ABC, CBS, MSN

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