KUALA LUMPUR: An elderly ethnic Chinese man has been buried as a Muslim after his Buddhist family lost a battle with Malaysia’s Islamic authorities who said he had converted, his son said on Friday.

Police seized the body of Gan Eng For, who died on Sunday aged 74, after his oldest son — himself a Muslim convert — said he had switched to the religion last year.

Other family members said Gan could not have converted because he was senile and paralysed after suffering two strokes.

“He could not even move his arms or talk,” his other son 42-year-old Gan Hock Sin said.

“It is shocking that Islamic authorities say he recited some Islamic words when he was being converted last year,” he said.

The dispute, the latest in a series of conversion rows in Malaysia, came shortly after a court ordered a Christian woman’s body be returned to her family after Islamic authorities admitted she had not converted. —AFP