The Malaysian Insight

DR Zakir Naik paid tribute to Dr Mahathir Mohamad again, calling the prime minister one of the few Muslim world leaders with the guts to stand up to global superpowers.

The Indian-born preacher praised Dr Mahathir for criticising the United States and the United Kingdom for sparking wars and conflict in the Middle East. 

Dr Mahathir, said Zakir, was the only Muslim leader who organised a tribunal on war crimes in 2011 which concluded that the UK and US fabricated evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Former US president George Bush cited this spurious evidence as a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003.

Five years after Malaysia’s tribunal, a similar public inquiry by the British government found that the UK’s decision to invade Iraq with the US was based on “flawed information”. 

“No other Muslim country had the guts to do this except Malaysia,” said Zakir in his speech titled Islamophobia, which was given at a packed football stadium in Kota Baru. 

“The tribunal was formed by Dr Mahathir and I greatly appreciate him for doing this. He is one of the few Muslims leaders who will call a spade a spade. He has guts.”

Zakir had previously praised Dr Mahathir for resisting calls to deport him to India where he is wanted on charges of terrorism, spreading hate and money-laundering.

His speech last night capped a three-day speaking tour in Kelantan at the invitation of the PAS government.

The organisers said the crowd, which filled all the stadium seats and flooded its football pitch, was close to 100,000.

Zakir’s last speech and question- nd-answer session, which in past events can run up to three hours, was cut short due because of a downpour about 1am. 

During his talk, the televangelist blamed Western countries, anti-Islam activists and their secular Muslim allies for spreading fears about Islam.

“Since Islam means the peace you get by submitting your will to Allah, Islamophobia in short is an irrational fear of peace.”

He said the American invasion of Iraq was driven by their politicians’ “fear towards Islam and peace” as the Arab nation had the strongest military.

The United States, he said, allegedly invested about US$8 billion (RM34 billion) to create and fund al-Qaeda and the Taliban to start a a proxy war with Russia in the 1980s, which at the time had invaded the country.

“The US war on terror is actually against Islam and against peace,” Zakir said. – August 10, 2019.