Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong Declared a Muslim, Children ‘Disinherited’

Saturday, 31 February 2018

Malaysiakelak.com.my News (used with permission, copyright not protected)
By Juslo Satire

(KUANTAN, Friday) – The Syariah Court has today declared that the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong was a Muslim when he passed away more than 10 years ago in 2007. The Syariah Court also ruled that since no non-Muslim is allowed to inherit any part of a Muslim’s assets or wealth, the inheritance of Lim’s assets by his non-Muslim children are invalid and unlawful.

“Therefore, the assets should be immediately returned to Tan Sri Lim’s name, and then redistributed to his Muslim heirs (if any) according to Syariah law. If he has no Muslim heir, then the assets shall be given to the Islamic authorities and they can do whatever they wish. The non-Muslim children are disinherited.” The Syariah Court ruled.

Dato’ Zakaria Lim Abdullah, 35, the late Tan Sri Lim’s only Muslim child and the 20th of his 20 offsprings, would be his sole heir and is now poised to become the Chairman of Genting Group, 1 of Southeast Asia’s richest companies worth RM2 trillion as at press time, after inheriting all the assets. (He would have inherited only 1/20 of Tan Sri Lim’s assets if Tan Sri Lim was not declared a Muslim.) However, he refused to confirm whether he would stop the gambling business of Genting even though it is haram under Islamic law.

“Are you saying that our Hadhari government should refuse to collect taxes from gambling, alcohol, pork and other haram businesses?” Dato’ Zakaria replied, perhaps rhetorically.

Dato’ Zakaria has also said that he shall honor his pledge to donate 1/10 of his newly inherited fortune to Jabatan Agama Islam Pahang and UMNO in equal share if he won the case, made 3 days before the Syariah Court decision.

“Business Reasons”

“My late father wanted to keep his conversion secret because he was a gambling tycoon, and he did not want to jeopardize his gambling empire or make his shareholders lose confidence in Genting,” said Dato’ Zakaria during the hearing in Syariah Court. The Syariah Court felt that “this is most likely true because of the huge business implications. It is very normal for Chinese to do this. We can accept that.”

As to the testimonies of Tan Sri Lim’s 19 other offsprings in the Syariah Court, who unanimously disputed the alleged conversion, the Syariah Court said,

“Even though it is 19 to 1, but because the non-Muslim witnesses refused to swear on the Qur’an before they testified in court, we could not consider their testimonies. In any event, even if they did swear on the Qur’an, the dhimmis… sorry, the non-Muslims would still carry less weight when compared to the testimony of 2 Muslim men. It is not about the number, it is about quality of the witnesses.”

The other witness supporting Dato’ Zakaria’s claim to have witnessed Tan Sri Lim’s conversion is Ustaz Abdul Rahman Ganilan Abdullah, 23 year old. The Ustaz would have been only 13 year old at that time of the conversion, but the Syariah Court said that,

“Being a righteous, God-fearing Muslim, we have no reason to suspect that the Ustaz told any lie. In any event, he has reached the age of puberty at the time (of the conversion) so he was qualified to witness the conversion.”

“Answer To God” – It Depends

The Syariah Court has also ruled that the overwhelming evidence of Tan Sri Lim drinking alcohol, praying to pagan idols, celebrating pagan religious festivals, eating pork and gambling in his own Genting Casino and generally behaving like a non-Muslim all his life until his death was “…irrelevant. Once you have converted, you are a Muslim till you die, no matter what you did before your death. You will answer to God for all your sins.”

However, on the same kind of “answer to God” argument made by the non-Muslim children that:

“By the same logic, the Deceased himself should answer to God for concealing his alleged 'conversion' from his family (and resulting in him not being buried as a Muslim and his assets distributed among his non-Muslim children); it's not up to the Islamic Authority to insist on his assets being inherited under Islamic law if he, had indeed converted but KNOWING FULLY WELL THAT HIS ASSETS WOULD BE DISTRIBUTED LIKE AN INFIDEL (AND HE MIGHT BURN IN HELL), still didn’t want to tell his family to bury him as a Muslim and distribute his assets like a Muslim.”

the Syariah Court said “you cannot say he must answer to God for everything. Sometimes he also has to answer to us, the Islamic Authority and Syariah Court. If we say he has to answer to us, then he has to. When it comes to God's law, logic has nothing to do with it. Why is it so difficult to understand?”

“New Conversion Policy” vs New Economic Policy

The case to declare one of the richest Chinese in the world (at his death) as a Muslim was started 2 years ago (8 years after his death), 1 month after another non-Muslim Malaysian tycoon’s Muslim son was able to exclusively inherit his father’s global business empire – worth RM80 billion at that time – by proving in Syariah Court that his father had “converted in secret,” resulting in his mother and all 9 other siblings losing the right to inherit any part of the tycoon’s wealth, leaving him the sole heir to the huge fortune.

There are currently at least 200 more cases of the same nature pending before the Syariah Courts nationwide involving deceased non-Muslims who were wealthy during their lifetime and left behind a huge personal fortune. Rough estimate suggests that 50% of them were started by 1 of the Muslim children of the deceased (99% of them newly converted as Muslims), and the rest by the Islamic Authorities seeking to disinherit all non-Muslim children. Many are now wondering who's next, and bookies all over the country (including those operated by Genting) have now closed the bets on the top 1,000 richest Chinese in Malaysia (both dead and alive) "as they have become hot favourites now," says the representatives from Ladbrokes Malaysia and William Hill Wahid (the Malaysian subsidiary of William Hill, UK).

If all of the cases succeed, it is estimated that the ratio of equity held by Muslims in Malaysia would jump from the meagre 19% as at 1 January 2018 to 76%, a whopping 3-fold increase.

The Perak Mufti, who applauded the Syariah Court’s ruling, said that this wave of after-death declarations of conversions is the new approach taken by the Islamic Authority to bring people to the right path. "We used to focus on the living, now we think we should focus on the dead people too. Under Islam Hadhari, it's never too late to bring them back to the right path so that they can achieve salvation on Judgment Day, even if they are already dead." He added that this would help to speed up the Islamicization of Malaysia, but is also designed to achieve the government’s goal to redistribute wealth among the races which the government could no longer do (and failed repeatedly to do) under the now abolished National Economic Policy.

“By creating real economic incentives for the dhimmis to become a real citizens of the Islamic state, we expect more of them to embrace the true path, and this will mean that we no longer have to rely on the NEP to achieve such noble socio-economic goals of the government. Besides, this is more effective because to take money away from living people will create a lot of noise, but a dead person will not make any noise, right?” He said.

However, it is not clear whether the non-Muslim children would still be able to keep their inheritance if they convert to Islam Hadhari immediately. The Perak Mufti, when consulted on this issue, said,

“If that could bring them to Islam Hadhari, then it would be good, so the Syariah Court should allow that. But then it might be unfair to those children who converted into Islam Hadhari earlier… perhaps we can still allow them to inherit only 30% of what an “early bird” Muslim heir would have been able to get, to provide some “early bird bonus incentives” for them to convert earlier. When we are dealing with Chinese, such bonus incentives are very important, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we’ll think about this in the next National Fatwa Council meeting. But rest assured that we shall continue our struggle and to finish our job – until the Kingdom comes (literally).”

Chinese Beginning to Be Concerned

The Chinese community has now taken this matter very seriously and are brainstorming on the options to overcome this problem. They have also called for an end to the practice of declaring a person’s status as a Muslim after his or her death, a radical change from their usual attitude to shy away from controversial political and religious issues. Analysts believe that this is because this time, it is threatening their economic interests.

Supporters of the now semi-defunct Malaysian Chinese Association, Gerakan and Malaysian Indian Congress (still part of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, though) have called on the top BN leadership to put forward a plan to resolve such controversial and provocative religious issues once and for all and in a manner which is fair to the non-Muslims. An MCA leader who declined to be named told our reporter:

“We fear a backlash. Most NGO and opposition leaders have called on the non-Muslims to boycott BN if no fair solution is put forward before the upcoming general election. These issues have been around since at least the Moorthy controversy in 2005 but still remained unresolved. They are now affecting the basic security and fundamental well-being of the non-Muslims.”

[Juslo’s clarification:

This is purely a SATIRE. NOTHING in this post is factually true. DEEP APOLOGIES to the family of the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong. Forgive me for using a real, prominent name in order to try to bring out the real, concrete implications of the stupidity, madness and suffering which are happening in Malaysia right now, and hopefully to raise awareness of the people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in order to prevent ABUSE AND MANIPULATION. Let's ensure that the above WILL NOT HAPPEN.

Juslo’s additional clarification on 1 February 2008:

Some have accused me of being 'provocative' and 'inciting hatred.' I want to clarify that these are NOT my intentions -- but I strongly believe that these are what the corpse-snatching evil doers from the 'Islamic Authorities' intended. You cannot blame the victims/their communities for reacting in anger to your provocation because you knew very well that this would cause anger, pain and disharomony, and yet you still chose to go ahead to do it -- you expect your victims/their communities to SMILE AND WELCOME you??

These reactions were dead certain -- you have seen them in the Moorthy case, and many cases before, so don't pretend that you are somehow 'surprised' by the anger this time. Please don't be so SELF-CENTERED, put yourselves into other people's shoes for a change.

Some also accused me of "bashing Islam." Honestly and sincerely, I D-O N-O-T believe that this is ISLAM, and (as someone who was once 'attracted to' and have learned much about Islam) I am sad that people would equate these pain-anger-suffering-causing evil actions as 'Islam.' I hope all those who wish to defend these people think twice before equating them with 'Islam.' And if you think this is just 'islamophobia' or 'lies,' then explain to us where are the safeguards and how and why this kind of abuse and manipulation will never happen. Put our minds at ease. (But please spare us the naive "Muslims will never lie in syariah court" excuses.)

But I hope this much we could agree on:

that Islam should be practised in a FAIR & JUST manner towards non-Muslims;

that good Muslims will continue to speak up against injustices everywhere, ESPECIALLY those committed against non-Muslims in the name of Islam;

that no more suffering n pain would be visited upon non-Muslims in the name of Islam no matter what is the justification;

that Islam will not be manipulated by individual Muslims for their selfish gains.]