TURKISH author Mustafa Akyol left Malaysia for the US tonight, hours after he was detained overnight yesterday on the orders of religious authorities.

A spokesman for the Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), which was Mustafa’s host, said the author had boarded a flight to Istanbul, Turkey, at 11.35pm.

It is understood that Mustafa will then continue his journey to Boston, the US, where he is a visiting fellow at the Freedom Project at Wellesley College.

“We sent him off, and thank God, he has texted us and informed us that he had boarded the plane,” the IRF spokeman told The Malaysian Insight.

Earlier this afternoon, Mustafa had been released from police custody after he was detained for 18 hours when he tried to board a flight at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport last night.

He had been detained by the Immigration Department after an arrest warrant was issued against him by the Federal Territories shariah court.

The warrant was requested by the Federal Territories Religious Department (Jawi) after Mustafa failed to present himself at the agency’s offices yesterday afternoon.

Mustafa had been summoned by Jawi, which wanted to record a statement from him for being involved in an IRF-organised forum titled “Does Freedom of Conscience Open the Floodgates to Apostasy”.

He was probed for breaching Section 11 of the Federal Territories Shariah Offences Act 1997, which makes it an offence to teach Islam or Islam-related topics without accreditation from Jawi.

Following a meeting with Jawi this afternoon, in which his statement was recorded, he was sent back to the Jalan Travers police station before being released about 2.30pm.

He was picked up by IRF, which then arranged for him to fly back tonight.

Mustafa had been in the country over the weekend for several IRF events, such as the talk on apostasy in Islam and the relevance of democracy.

The US-based journalist is a writer of Islamic issues and politics, and his 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, Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesia.

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

A forum based on his latest book that was scheduled for yesterday afternoon was cancelled following pressure from Jawi. – September 26, 2017.