Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has insisted that controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who is facing charges of money laundering and hate speech in India, is “not being harboured” in Malaysia.

Speaking to The Post in an exclusive interview, Mahathir said that on the contrary, Malaysia was merely providing Naik, who is an Indian national, temporary refuge in the country. “No. Not at all. Malaysia is not harbouring Zakir Naik,” he said.

Naik fled India to Malaysia where he has lived for the last three years and was given permanent residence under the dethroned National Front coalition government that ruled the country for 60 years.

The party, helmed by former Prime Minister Najib Razak – now facing a sleuth of criminal charges for graft and abuse of power involving the 1MDB scandal – lost the 2018 general elections amid accusations of kleptocracy and widespread corruption.

But Naik claims he has not broken any Indian law.

“Because I was spreading peace, I was giving solutions for humanity, all the people who don’t like peace to prevail, they don’t like me,” he was reported to have said, adding that he was being targeted because of his work to spread Islam.

Mahathir told The Post on Tuesday that the Malaysian government could not consciously deport Naik to India “because there is a great deal of animosity of the Hindus against Muslims to the point that they can lynch people for doing something against Hindu beliefs”.

“So to send him back in such a condition is to expose him to such a danger. It is for this reason that we cannot send him back. We may have to [send him to] other countries, but at the moment it is very difficult to find countries willing to accept him.

“For the moment he has to stay in Malaysia but we will try our best to send him to other countries where his kind of preaching is more acceptable,” Mahathir said.

Naik courted controversy last month when he questioned the loyalty of Indian Malaysians during a preaching session.

He claimed that Hindus in Malaysia had “100 times more rights” than the Muslim minority in India and that they supported the “prime minister of India and not the prime minister of Malaysia”.

He also attacked the country’s Chinese community, when addressing calls for his deportation and claimed that the ethnic minority should leave first as they were “guests” of Malaysia.

“You know, someone called me a guest. So I said, before me, the Chinese were the guests. If you want the new guest to go first, ask the old guest to go back. The Chinese aren’t born here, most of them. Maybe the new generations, yes,” said Naik.

Most non-Muslim Malaysians, including at least four federal ministers and other senior politicians, have demanded that Naik be deported for threatening the country’s multi-racial and multi-religious social fabric.

Muslims make up about 60 per cent of Malaysia’s 32 million people. The rest are mostly ethnic Chinese who are mainly Buddhists and Christians and Indians who are mainly Hindu.

Even Mahathir said Naik had crossed the line with his racially toned comments, while Malaysian police have barred him from delivering any further public talks in the country.

Although Naik had apologised, non-Muslim Malaysians are not having any of it and still want him deported.

Responding to the public outcry, two federal ministers issued a joint statement last month.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo and Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran said: “We have expressed our position which is that action must be taken and that Zakir Naik should no longer be allowed to remain in Malaysia.”

When asked to explain the difference between his resistance to immediately deport Naik and the Malaysian government’s demand that whichever country is hosting Low Taek Jho return him to Malaysia, Mahathir said: “I suppose each country has its right in the case of Jho Low.”

Low, who is infamously known as Jho Low, is wanted in Malaysia for his involvement in the controversial 1MDB scandal for which Najib is currently facing trial.

Mahathir said: “We haven’t actually identified the country where he is hiding, but we do hope that [whichever country has him] will send him back because if Jho Low is returned to Malaysia, the worst that can happen to him is that he will have to face trial.

“First he will have to be arrested because he has committed crimes, but we are not going to take revenge on him or do something outside the law [to him].”