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Raised as a Muslim but teased about his Chinese looks, Zulhaidi Omar always felt out of place growing up in an ethnic Malay family, so much so that when he was 13 he walked out of his home.
Then he found out he had been switched at birth.
Now, after being reunited with his real parents thanks to an extraordinary piece of luck, he wants to renounce Islam for Buddhism - but is running into the complex ethnic, religious and racial mix that makes up modern Malaysia.
His dramatic story emerged over the weekend when he gave a news conference to highlight his plight.
Zulhaidi Omar, now 29, was working in a supermarket when a woman noticed a strong family resemblance to her own parents.
Her conviction that they were related chimed with his own feeling that he did not belong to the community he was brought up in.
After leaving home he worked his way up from waiting on tables and washing cars and saved enough to pursue a diploma in business administration.
"I agreed to go for a DNA test, and the results confirmed they were indeed my biological parents," the Star newspaper quoted Zulhaidi as saying.
"The girl who was always looking at me was actually my elder sister who suspected that I was her brother because of my striking resemblance to our father," Zulhaidi said. Since then he has been living with his biological parents, 66-year-old Teo Ma Leong and his wife Lim Sik Hai, 62, although it took six months before he called them "mum" and "dad."
"I looked different from my family members and my classmates," he recalled.
"When they found me, I was shocked because I never thought I would find my real parents," Zulhaidi said, according to the News Straits Times.
Now he wants to change his name to a Chinese name and renounce Islam.
The problem is that while the Malaysian constitution guarantees freedom of religion, it defines Malays as Muslim, and name and religion are specified on identity cards. Malays make up 60 percent of the population compared to 26 percent ethnic Chinese and eight percent ethnic Indians.
Moreover, while Malaysia's civil courts operate parallel to Sharia courts for Muslims in areas such as divorce and child custody, the question of which takes precedence is increasingly murky in cases also involving non-Muslims. It has triggered some high-profile clashes - a mountaineering hero born a Hindu was buried last year as a Muslim despite his family's protests.
Meanwhile the nation's highest court is yet to rule on a case brought by a convert to Christianity which will set a precedent on whether Muslims have a right to change religion. Zulhaidi's biological father Teo for his part said he had always suspected his fifth child, Tian Fa, had been switched at birth as he had dark features and looked different to the rest of his six children.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2007

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