Miss Malaysia

It is helmed by Tan Sri Datuk Danny Ooi, the President & Franchise owner, a fellow Malaysian who dared to dream the great, and envisioned putting Malaysia on the world map.

Color keysIn Malaysia, female Muslims were denied participation in beauty pageants following the issue of a fatwa in 1996 by the Mufti of Selangor, Ishak Baharom.

According to Wan Zahidi, the fatwa prohibiting Muslim women from joining beauty pageants was issued and gazetted under the Federal Territories Islamic Administration Act in February 1996.

In recent years, the National Fatwa Council, the country's highest Islamic body, had also issued rulings forbidding Muslims from using Botox and banned women from exhibiting tomboy behaviour, which it defined as behaving or dressing like men or taking part in lesbian sex.

The council came under heavy scrutiny for its proposal to ban yoga after a university lecturer advised people to stop practising it for fear that it could deviate from the teachings of Islam.

The move was met with protests from progressive Muslim women's groups like Sisters in Islam who deemed the fatwas regressive while observers claimed it highlighted the worrying trend of overt Islamisation in Malaysia.