The 30-year-old Muslim man – whose name was retained by his lawyer to protect his privacy – has filed a lawsuit after being arrested in central Selangor in 2018 for attempted homosexuality, which he denies. .
Same-sex acts are illegal in Malaysia, although convictions are rare. The country, which has 13 states, has a two-way legal system, with Islamic criminal and family laws applying to Muslims alongside civil law.
LGBT + lawyers claim that Islamic law has been increasingly used to target the gay community in the Southeast Asian country, with an increase in arrests and punishments, from beatings to imprisonment.
In a unanimous decision, the Malaysian high court ruled on Thursday that the Islamic provision used in Selangor is unconstitutional and the authorities do not have the power to enact the law.
“This is historic. This is a milestone for LGBT + rights in Malaysia,” said Numan Afifi, founder of the LGBT + rights group Pelangi Campaign, which was not involved in the process.
Numan hoped that Selangor would immediately repeal the Islamic ban, and other states would follow suit.
Despite the ruling, gay men in Malaysia still face up to 20 years in prison under a British colonial law banning homosexual sex, known as Section 377.
“We want to live in dignity without fear of prosecution. Of course, Section 377 is still there – it’s not the end, but it’s a beginning,” Numan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In Malaysia, a country of 32 million where 60% of the population is Muslim, many homosexuals are not open about their sexuality.
The man who filed the lawsuit claimed that Selangor did not have the power to enforce an Islamic ban on “sexual relations against the order of nature” when homosexual sex was already a crime under civil law.
The court agreed that the state’s power to commit such crimes “is subject to a constitutional limit,” Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat wrote in the ruling.
The Selangor Islamic Religious Council, a respondent in the process, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The man involved in the legal appeal was among 11 men arrested on suspicion of attempted homosexual sex during a raid on a private residence.
Five of them pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison, beatings and fines in 2019, sparking outrage among human rights activists who said it created an environment of fear for LGBT + people.
Two women were assaulted for “attempting to have lesbian sex” under Islamic law in the East Coast’s terengganu territory in 2018, the same year a transgender woman was attacked.