Malaysia’s king has called on all parties to stop taking advantage of the controversy over the sale of five pairs of socks bearing the word “Allah”, after an escalation of tension that saw death threats aimed at a politician and an attempt to petrol bomb a supermarket branch narrowly fail.
On Tuesday, the ethnic Chinese owner and directors of KK Super Mart and a factory which shipped the socks printed with the Arabic word for God – Allah – were charged in court with offending religious feelings, almost two weeks since the issue triggered an outpouring of outrage among some in Muslim-majority Malaysia.
They deny the charges but have already profusely apologised for allowing the socks to go on sale.
The issue has led to a surge of religious fervour among conservative sections of the Malay Muslim community, amping up racial tensions with the country’s sizeable Chinese and Indian communities that have been simmering since the last general election in 2022.
In a statement on Wednesday, Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, who recently took the throne, said there was no need for any party to continue fuelling anger and called on Malaysians to learn from the incident and strive to strengthen unity.
“Persistent anger brings no benefit. All parties, especially community leaders, must act with maturity,” the king said.
This came after Melaka state police on Tuesday announced that they had apprehended a 68-year-old car mechanic for making death threats against Akmal Saleh, the leader of Malay nationalist party Umno’s youth wing who had been at the forefront of the issue, calling for a boycott against the supermarket’s 881 branches nationwide.
“The suspect said that the Umno youth chief is being overboard in the KK Mart issue [and] one day will surely be shot dead,” said district police commissioner Christopher Patit.
Political analysts have panned Akmal, labelling him a “bully” and “rabble-rouser” and accused him of fanning the flames of public anger for the political gain of his party, which has been steadily losing the support of the Malay Muslim electorate.
The party, which led Malaysia for over 60 years, dwindled to just 26 seats in the country’s 222-seat legislature.
The arrest came just a day after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called for the public not to take matters into their own hands, saying the job of investigating and pronouncing judgment should be left to the authorities.
“[But] the public immediately makes judgment when they see such issues in social media such as TikTok,” Anwar said during a Ramadan dinner event at a college.
Tunku Mohar Mokhtar from the International Islamic University of Malaysia said the issue had been both politicised and ethnicised by Umno.
“The fact that the issue has reached this magnitude suggests that racial prejudice is strong,” Tunku Mohar told This Week in Asia.
James Chin from Tasmania University warned that it can be impossible to control religious hatred once politics has unleashed it, citing examples from Pakistan and India.
“It has led to violence and many deaths in the name of religion. Is that what we want to happen here?” Chin asked.
His comment was in reaction to a botched petrol bomb attack against a separate KK Super Mart branch in Bidor, a small, predominantly ethnic Hokkien, Hakka and Cantonese town 100km north of Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
Local newspaper China Press reported that the petrol bomb thrown in front of the store at 5am failed to explode, saving the store employees inside from harm.
Facebook has been awash with angry comments, some decrying politicians for not speaking out more vocally on the sock scandal and others seeing it as an attack on faith.
Akmal has come out and condemned the botched attack in a Facebook post, where he also criticised the death threat against himself.
“Despite being threatened with death, my stance and that of all Malaysian Muslims will not budge that is for us to continue this [boycott] campaign so that it becomes a stern lesson for all not to disparage Islam,” he said.