PAS central committee member Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki has brought the tone down on his comments in a WhatsApp chat that have been spread on the social and mass media and condemned by a number of people as "racist and extremist".

Saying that this was an impersonal and purely academic opinion, Zuhdi in a long note on his Facebook page stressed that he was more an academician than a politician, and gave plenty of examples from his past showing him to be a very tolerant and moderate minded Muslim.