Legal Protection of Malaysia Umrah Pilgrims

Abstract

The Umrah is an Islamic pilgrimage to holy cities of Makkah and Madinah and is performed by Muslims that can be undertaken at any time of the year. Umrah travel package is a common service used by consumer in Malaysia. The high demand for this service is contributed by better conditions of the economy in Malaysia so that raising awareness of Malaysian to perform Umrah and the number of registered Umrah pilgrims continued to increase annually. There are also many complaints reported in the Tribunal for Consumer Claims in relation to this service. The aim of the article is to analyse the extent to which the relevant laws protect the rights of Umrah consumers in Malaysia. Being qualitative in nature, this study collects relevant framework which include laws, regulations and guidelines which are related to Umrah services. The purpose is to analyse the adequacy of the existing consumer protection laws in protecting Umrah pilgrims. The result of the study indicated that in Malaysia, there is no self-standing law on Umrah pilgrims’ protection, though there are several laws which provide limited rights to pilgrims such as the law of contract, the law of tort, the Consumer Protection Act 1999 and the Tourism Industry Act 1992. The existing laws are inadequate to provide a comprehensive protection to the Umrah pilgrims. This article proves that there are many hindrances under the law of contract and the law of tort for Umrah pilgrims to seek for remedies. In addition, there exist lacunae and ambiguity in the statutory provisions under the Consumer Protection Act 1999 and Tourism Industry Act 1992 which need further amendments. This study proposes improvement to the existing laws so that it will be able to provide adequate protection to the Umrah pilgrims.