KUALA LUMPUR – Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik alluded in the Kuala Lumpur High Court today that he is still an Indian citizen with valid travel documents and is still loyal to his country of birth.
Zakir took to the witness stand today in the defamation suit he has filed against Malaysian politician Charles Santiago, formerly an MP for Klang.
The preacher, who also holds permanent resident status in Malaysia since April 2016, was questioned by defence lawyers regarding the status of his Indian citizenship, given various news publications previously reporting that the Indian government had revoked his passport.
However, Zakir told the high court that when travelling recently to Doha in Qatar, he did so with an Indian passport.
“Yes, Zakir was questioned today regarding his citizenship status in India and his travel documents.
“He was also asked what documents were used for his travel to Doha, Qatar.
“Basically, he still has his Indian passport and reports saying otherwise are untrue,” Puteri Ummi Kartini Abd Latiff, a lawyer representing Zakir, told The Vibes after today’s proceedings.
It was previously reported that the preacher was present in Qatar during the FIFA World Cup in November last year.
In fact, in Zakir’s witness statement filed in court on November 17 last year, he made reference to an interview published by The Week in May 2019 where he had claimed that he had refused numerous offers of citizenship because he does not want to give up his Indian citizenship.
“Therefore, the defendant’s (Santiago’s) allegations above, inter alia, that I as ‘a citizen of India owes no loyalty to that country’, ‘stirred unrest among the citizenry of India’, ‘displayed disloyalty to the country of birth and is a fugitive of its justice’, are all denied,” Zakir said in his witness statement.
On allegations of causing racial disunity in Malaysia
Zakir filed the suit against Santiago in November 2019, alleging that statements made by the former DAP lawmaker in a Facebook post in August of the same year were defamatory in nature.
In the social media posting, Santiago mentioned that Zakir’s statements during a speech in Kelantan in August 2019 were inflammatory, dangerous, and had the potential of stirring racial riots.
Santiago had also said Zakir was attempting to curry favour with then Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Muhammad, who refused to extradite the preacher despite requests by India.
It is understood that the former Klang MP referred to statements whereby Zakir told a crowd that minority Hindus in Malaysia are treated much better than Muslims in India despite being a smaller percentage of the population.
However, in the same speech, Zakir also seemed to have suggested that Malaysian Hindus support the Indian prime minister and not their Malaysian leader.
“They are half the percentage, numbers-wise very less, half the percentage of India where Muslims are, yet the rights they get here (are a) hundred times more than what India gives rights to the minorities.
“So much so that they support the prime minister of India but not the prime minister of Malaysia, Masha Allah,” Zakir was quoted as saying in the speech.
On statement about Malaysian Chinese
Meanwhile, when accused of also making derogatory statements to Malaysians of Chinese ethnicity and asking them to leave the country, Zakir again suggested that he was misquoted.
He explained that Santiago had come to the wrong conclusion regarding his speech and that his words had been manipulated.
Part of the text in contention says: “Today, somebody called me a guest. So, I said, ‘before me, the Chinese are the guests. They aren’t born here. So, if you want the new guest to go first, ask the old guests to go back. The Chinese, they are not born here, most of them. Maybe the new generation, yes.”
In his defence to the allegations, Zakir made reference to past press statements in court where he explained that he found it unfair that Hindus in Malaysia placed more trust in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government than Interpol, Indian courts, and the Malaysian government itself over the criminal allegations against him.
Meanwhile, with regard to his statement about the Chinese, Zakir said he was called a “guest” by a Malaysian citizen who told him to leave the country, whereby the preacher alleges that a local Chinese politician had agreed with the suggestion.
“I never suggested that the Chinese should leave; rather, I only pointed out the flaw in his argument by reminding him that he was as much a ‘guest’ as I am.
‘How does this suggest ‘Chinese expulsion’ as my haters allege?” Zakir asked in a press release dated August 2019, which was referred to in his witness statement.
It should be noted that while Zakir’s witness statement is available in full via the judiciary’s e-filing system, it is possible that the court may have struck out some parts in the document during proceedings. – The Vibes, February 23, 2023
