THE Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) will try to gain access to well-known Turkish author Mustafa Akyol who was detained at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport last night.

Suhakam commissioner Jerald Joseph said he would lead a team going to the airport to find out why the guest speaker was detained.

According to Mustafa’s host, Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), the last communication from the author was about 11pm when he texted his wife that he had been stopped by Immigration.

IRF director Ahmad Farouk Musa told The Malaysian Insight that the Immigration Department did not give a reason for his detention.

Earlier yesterday, Mustafa had been summoned by the Federal Territories Religious Department (Jawi) for questioning over him allegedly teaching religion without credentials.

Mustafa was stopped by the Immigration Department as he was about to board a plane to Rome, Italy, on his way back to Boston in the United States.

The author and journalist was in Malaysia over the weekend to deliver a series of talks organised by IRF, a local Muslim think tank.

Mustafa was due to present a talk yesterday afternoon, which was cancelled at the last minute after he received the summons from Jawi, which wanted to question him under the Federal Territories Shariah Criminal Offences Act.

The talk that was cancelled was entitled “The Islamic Jesus: The Commonalities Between Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, at the Nottingham University Malaysia teaching centre in Kuala Lumpur.

The day before, Mustafa had delivered the lectures, “Does Freedom of Conscience Open the Flood gates to Apostasy” and “Is Democracy Still Relevant”.

Following Mustafa’s detention, IRF tweeted: “After being harassed and summoned by (the) Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department, Akyol (is) now being detained by immigration at KLIA.”

In a follow up tweet, IRF said: “We suspect it might have to do with Jawi. Creeping Talibanisation.”

The US-based journalist is a renowned writer of Islamic issues and politics, whose writings appear regularly in Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News, the New York Times, and Al-Monitor.com.

He has published six books including “Islam Without Extreme: A Muslim Case for Liberty”, which has been translated into Turkish, Malay, and Indonesian.

His latest book is titled, “The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims”.

Controversy over yesterday’s aborted talk yesterday arose as some local Muslim groups play up fears of “Christianisation” ahead of the 14th general election. – September 26, 2017.