KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 ― DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang today denied equating Islam with kleptocracy via a media statement he had made recently.

Instead, the Iskandar Puteri MP said former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was making “wild and false” allegations in interpreting his statement, asking “how low” can Najib go in making such “unfounded” claim against him. 

“A school student with ordinary mental and intellectual capabilities would not make such a colossal blunder but the former prime minister of Malaysia can make such a shocking mistake. What does it say about Najib?” Lim asked in a statement.

Najib recently claimed that Lim was equating Islam to kleptocracy in a statement that the latter had issued, and also said that Lim had “crossed boundaries in doing so”.

Lim stressed that the objective of his statement was that Islam should not be equated with kleptocracy.

“I cannot but doubt Najib’s intellectual calibre and even his educational standard when a statement with the objective to declare that Islam should not be equated with corruption and kleptocracy is interpreted by Najib as a statement equating Islam with corruption and kleptocracy,” Lim said.

Lim asked other PAS and Umno leaders who also believe his statement was equating Islam to kleptocracy to “identify themselves” so that Malaysians could evaluate their intellectual capacity and “moral failing.”

“Let me make myself clear. I have never in my life belittled Islam or any of the great religions of the world,” he insisted.