SUCH was the lamentation edupreneur Victor Tan put forth on Facebook as he pointed out the coincidence of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim exchanging warm embraces with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Saturday (Feb 7) while the Anti-Illegal Houses of Worship Movement rally was brewing “just kilometres away at SOGO Kuala Lumpur”.
Our media ecosystem screams “Pakistan Zindabad” (“Long Live Pakistan” in Urdu) day in and day out.
We casually tell Malaysian Indians to “go back to India” while simultaneously expecting India to buy our palm oil and sign trade agreements.
Look at comments sections almost anywhere you have your ‘rule of law’ discussion or any discussion about the Malaysia Indian community from Sinar Harian to Utusan Malaysia and you will see Malaysians insult Indian culture, mock Malaysian Indians.…
Friendship smacks hypocrisy
Claiming that the rally which featured controversial Muslim convert preacher Zamri Vinoth as its coordinator was “timed, quite deliberately to coincide with Modi’s arrival”, the founder of tutoring service provider Ascendant Academy, insisted that the “the cruel irony was impossible to miss”.
This is given that although the rally’s stated purpose was about illegal temples, its underlying motive is “a brazen defence of Zakir Naik, the fugitive preacher India has been asking Malaysia to extradite for eight years”.
While our leaders spoke of friendship and cooperation, we continued to harbour a man wanted for money laundering and inciting religious hatred, protected by a network of political patrons and enabled by governmental cowardice.
Beneath the surface pleasantries of this state visit lay a festering wound that our government seemed determined to ignore.
As Malaysians, we need to confront an uncomfortable truth: we don’t treat India like a friend. We treat India like a convenient economic partner we can exploit while showing contempt for in every other arena.
Political patronage, cowardice
In the contention of Tan who is also an avid social media influencer, such attitude “isn’t friendship but one of using someone while disrespecting them to their face”. He thus ranted:
Then we have the audacity to call India a ‘friend’ when their PM visits. And nowhere is this hypocrisy more evident than in our continued protection of Zakir Naik.
For eight years – eight (long) years – India has been asking us to extradite a man wanted for serious crimes.
This isn’t some unreasonable request. This is basic international judicial cooperation, the kind that happens between actual friends and allies every day … Yet we’ve blown them off every single time.
Five years, eight months and 24 days since the last formal request yet Zakir Naik is nowhere close to being extradited.
In Tan’s opinion, Malaysia’s refusal to extradite Zakir Naik “rests on two interconnected foundations, neither of which we should be proud of”.
The first is political patronage. Zakir Naik has cultivated a network of influential supporters within our religious and political establishment. Figures like the Perlis mufti have publicly defended him, inviting him to religious events and even defending his honour in parliament.
The second foundation of why Malaysia continues to protect Zakir Naik is cowardice. Pure, simple cowardice. Our government – despite controlling both the police and the military – is terrified of the protests that would follow any move to extradite Zakir Naik. – Feb 9, 2026
Main image credit: Anwar Ibrahim/Facebook
