COMMENT | In July of 2018, I wrote two articles about Islamic preacher Zakir Naik - taking a closer look at his actual teachings, and discussing some of the polemics surrounding him.

Today, Zakir is back in the news, as he has apparently been what we could term "soft banned" from speaking in Penang.

As coincidence would have it, we also recently saw that an event at which former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak was scheduled to speak at UKM was "postponed".

These incidents provide something of a litmus test for the new Pakatan Harapan government. It is easy to talk about freedom of speech, but it is considerably harder to walk the talk.

Most reasonable people will agree that freedom of speech should come with a measure of responsibility and that we can conceive of cases wherein some restrictions should be placed on public speech. One clear example would be cases where a speaker is planning to incite violence.

Unless there is clear proof of such intent however, a vibrant democracy should place very few restrictions on free speech - indeed, perhaps none at all.

Let us see whether the cases of Zakir and Najib warrant such restrictions.

The debate surrounding Zakir and his place in Malaysia is not a new one. I remember vividly that the first article I wrote about Zakir was not the same article I thought I would write when I began my first draft.

Prior to writing the article, I had an impression of Zakir that was probably similar to many people of my background - that he was a bigot with tendencies towards incitement...