KUALA LUMPUR: Controversial speaker Dr Zakir Naik, who attended the Kuala Lumpur Summit 2019 here, has been told not to provoke racial sentiments, says Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
"Zakir Naik has been told not to provoke racial sentiments. He is here but we also have a lot of other racial statements being made by a lot of other people.
"We have to ask people not to make comments about race relations in Malaysia because it is a sensitive issue and we don't want to provoke and antagonise citizens and races in this country," said the Prime Minister at a press conference after the summit concluded on Saturday (Dec 21).
Zakir was also present at the press conference.
On India's recent statement about its newly-approved Citizenship Amendment Act, Dr Mahathir said that the Indian government had the right to state their stance.
This was in response to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, which called on Malaysia labelled Dr Mahathir's comments on the issue "factually inaccurate".
"Their opinion is their opinion, my opinion is my opinion. If you want to believe me or others, it's up to you.
"In the first place, this conference is about improving the situation in Muslim countries. It is not directed at other countries because we don't expect other countries to take our advice and not do things which are bad to Muslim countries.
"We didn't single out many of the instances where wrong things were done to many Muslims and Muslim countries," Dr Mahathir said.
He reiterated that it was "very unfortunate" that India was excluding Muslims from becoming citizens.
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