Did Malaysian PM seek Kerala cleric’s help on Zakir Naik?

Amidst strong rumours from certain quarters that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was in India for the BRICS Summit, flew down to Kerala to meet the Grand Mufti of India, Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar, to find a solution to New Delhi’s request for the extradition of fugitive preacher Zakir Naik, the Indian cleric vowed to collaborate to develop Artificial Intelligence in a way that Muslims don’t become victims of digital colonisation.

Ibrahim – widely considered a liberal leader who hasproudly stated that he is a moderate, a reputation strengthened by his friendships with reformist Muslim scholars – had confirmed that while in New Delhi for the Summit, India had raised the issue of Naik’s extradition.

Naik, 60, has been living in Malaysia since 2016 and Ibrahim, it is learnt, doesn’t want Naik’s presence in his country to become an obstacle to further improving ties with India. However, Ibrahim is also worried about a possible backlash from hardline clerics back home who may resent Naik’s extradition to India without any religious authorisation. Neither Kanthapuram nor Ibrahim were immediately available for comments. Naik, a charismatic orator, is wanted in India for hate speeches and over money-laundering charges.

It is here, people close to the matter said, that a directive by Musliyar, who has often praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will help; a cleric’s endorsement of an extradition will embolden Ibrahim’s hands.

Ibrahim travelled to Kozhikode, Kerala, to meet the Grand Mufti Musliyar on the day the BRICS Summit concluded. Both met at the Markaz Central Campus in Kozhikode, attracting criticism from women’s groups and several others over Kanthapuram’s recent comment that Muslim women’s movements in the public space need to be restricted, especially when unrelated men are around. The comment didn’t go down well among younger Muslims who tend to resist when spiritual leaders spout gender-insensitive comments that they see as being out of tune with the times.

For his part, Ibrahim told a news channel in Delhi that he didn’t agree with several of Musliyar’s views while he respected him for his knowledge of the Quran.

As Open reported earlier, Musliyar, general secretary of the All India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama and general secretary of Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama, has a penchant for courting controversies. He had said in 2012 that he had acquired a strand of Prophet Muhammad’s hair, which he said would be housed in a mosque, drawing vehement opposition from Islamic groups and seminaries, including the one in Deoband.

Recently, Musliyar claimed that the strand of hair he had preserved had grown by one centimetre. Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama was formed in Calicut in 1926 and it split in 1989, leading to the creation of two factions—EK and AP (of which Kanthapuram Musliyar is the leader).

Now, the initiative that Musliyar has launched in Kozhikode, called the “Responsible AI Project”, aims to battle various ethnic, religious and other prejudices embedded in AI platforms as well as automated chatbots, including generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude versions. According to local media reports in Kozhikode, Ibrahim opined that Muslim communities and global societies must master modern technology and AI because failing to understand these systems could lead to a new form of digital "colonisation". He also said that he was worried about new forms of subjugation.

Ibrahim, who stayed at the Tula luxury clinical wellness resort in Kozhikode during his visit, earned the wrath of various groups within India and abroad over what they termed as a tacit endorsement of the cleric’s misogynistic and hardline views.