It is the latest in an increasing number of interfaith conflicts that have raised tensions in multi-ethnic Malaysia.

About 60 per cent of Malaysians are Muslim Malays, and most disputes that landed in court have ended against non-Muslims who feel their religious rights are under threat.

An Islamic Shariah High Court in the central Negeri Sembilan state ruled on Thursday that Gan Eng Gor, 74, also identified as Amir Gan Abdullah, was a Muslim and should be buried under Islamic rites. The burial took place late Thursday in Negeri Sembilan.

The man's body was seized by police on a complaint by his eldest son, Abdul Rahman Gan, a Muslim convert.

He claimed his father had changed his religion from Buddhism to Islam last July.

The rest of the family disputed this, and the case came to the Shariah High Court.

The court's judge, Mohamad Nadzri Abdul Rahman, told reporters he ruled in favour of the eldest son because Mr Amir's wife and seven other children, who had disputed the conversion, were not in court on Thursday and he couldn't hear their arguments.

Gan Hock Sin, another son of the dead man, said the family didn't go to the Shariah court because they felt it was unfair to hear the case there.

'It's not fair for us. I don't know how they say he converted. My father couldn't even talk (before his death),' Mr Gan told the reporters.

'Unfortunately we feel the way they do (these conversions) is not fair for non-Muslim people. The government should be more transparent,' he said.

He said the police seized the body when the family was carrying out Buddhist rites in a Chinese funeral parlor.

The family had asked the state's civil High Court to hear the case, but a judge ruled he had no jurisdiction in the matter as the Shariah court had already made a decision, said a court official, who declined to be named citing protocol.

Malaysia has a dual court system for civil matters with secular courts for non-Muslims and Shariah courts for Muslims.

In interfaith disputes, involving Muslims, the Shariah court usually gets the last word, making a favorable decision for professed non-Muslims less likely.

The latest case follows another one earlier this month where Islamic authorities claimed a woman?s body, arguing she converted to Islam.

Her husband, who maintained she had been Christian until her death, won the case after authorities retracted their claims because they found that the conversion had not been done according to Islamic law.

A quarter of the country's 27 million people is ethnic Chinese, who are mostly Taoist, Buddhists and Christians, and 8 per cent are ethnic Indians, many of whom are Hindus. -- AP