The court rejected this, holding that both were presumed capable of taking on their mothers’ nationality, regardless of the fact that both mothers had disappeared from their children’s lives decades ago. Malaysia is not unique in having once tied citizenship to legitimacy, but it is increasingly an outlier in still doing so. Nationality law is a matter of constitutional and statutory law, not purely religious law. That amendment addressed a different gap, mothers of overseas-born children, but the precedent matters: constitutional citizenship law in Malaysia is not frozen. Malaysia helped itself take a step in that direction in 2024, for children of Malaysian mothers born abroad.