SINGAPORE: Earlier this week, authorities ordered the social media accounts of Zulfikar Bin Mohamad Shariff to be disabled in Singapore below the On-line Legal Harms Act.
In keeping with an announcement from the Ministry of House Affairs (MHA) on Nov 26 (Wednesday), Zulfikar “has repeatedly continued to fire up discontent inside the native Malay/Muslim neighborhood towards the Chinese language neighborhood in Singapore” and “has incited emotions of enmity, hatred, ill-will and hostility towards, contempt for and mock of various racial and spiritual teams in Singapore.”
The ministry, along with the Singapore Police Drive, has deemed Zulfikar’s social media posts to be offences below Singapore’s Upkeep of Non secular Concord Act. Due to this fact, they’ve issued an account restriction course to TikTok to disable his account on the platform, in addition to a disabling course to Meta, doing the identical for Zulfikar’s Fb web page.
“This may cease Zulfikar’s accounts/pages from additional speaking in Singapore, and harming our racial and spiritual concord,” the assertion reads.
Who’s Zulfikar Bin Mohamad Shariff?
Zulfikar, 54, renounced his Singapore citizenship in 2020 and is an Australian citizen, having moved there together with his household in 2002.
In 2016, Zulfikar was detained below the Inner Safety Act when authorities discovered that he had promoted terrorism, particularly the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This “on-line glorification” of ISIS contributed to the radicalisation of at the very least two different Singaporeans.
MHA added that Zulfikar had referred to as for Muslims to reject the constitutional, secular, and democratic state in favour of an Islamic state ruled by Syariah regulation. Moreover, he believed that if wanted, violence ought to be used to realize this objective.
When he was arrested, he admitted to having entered Singapore together with his Singapore passport however didn’t disclose that he had Australian citizenship. In 2013, he additionally falsely declared to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) that he held citizenship out of the country as a result of he didn’t wish to surrender his Singapore citizenship on the time. Singapore doesn’t permit twin citizenship for adults.
He was later jailed for six weeks after pleading responsible to at least one cost below the Passports Act of constructing a false assertion within the utility.
As for his more moderen actions, he posted a video on TikTok on July 19, 2025, that falsely claimed that Malay Muslims had been compelled to maneuver away from Islam and assimilate into the Chinese language neighborhood in Singapore. This is only one instance of the equally inflammatory content material in his posts and movies.
Furthermore, members of the general public have offered suggestions to the authorities relating to Zulfikar’s posts, which embody quite a few police studies that say the content material is a risk to Singapore’s racial and spiritual concord.
At current, the police have launched investigations into Zulfikar’s “egregious conduct.”
“The Singapore Authorities takes a really severe view of threats to our racial and spiritual disharmony, together with from foreigners, and won’t hesitate to behave towards them,” the MHA added. /TISG
Learn additionally: Assertion of ISA detainee Zulfikar’s household offered deceptive image, MHA
