Credit : Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's X
KUALA LUMPUR, November 11, 2026 – Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has said that service to the country, even over hundreds of years, can never justify letting anyone plunder the wealth of the people and the nation, and that those who commit corruption belong in prison.
In a Malay-language post shared on X on Wednesday afternoon, Anwar wrote that compromising with corruption in the name of past service was far removed from the teachings of Islam. He did not name any person, institution or case in the post.
‘Tolerance for evil’
His full message, rendered in English, read: “Service of hundreds of years cannot be a reason for us to allow anyone to plunder and rob the wealth of the people and the country. This attitude of compromising with corruption in the name of service is far from the teachings of Islam. This ‘tolerance for evil’ is what is destroying us. Those of us who hate and oppose corruption must speak out louder and send a clear message that the place for the corrupt is in prison.”
The post carried a graphic quoting remarks Anwar made at the Forum Ilmuwan MADANI Series 14. In the quotation, he said he always reminds himself of what Indonesian leader Muhammad Natsir described as a culture of “permissiveness”.
The Natsir quotation
The graphic quoted Anwar as saying, in Malay: “Everything is okay. Damage a little, okay. Steal a little, okay. How little? Billions, okay. So, this tolerance for evil is what is destroying us.”
Muhammad Natsir was an Indonesian Islamic scholar and politician who served as that country’s prime minister from September 1950 to April 1951. Anwar has spoken of him with admiration on previous occasions, including at the 2024 launch of a book on Natsir’s scholarship.
Series 14 of the Forum Ilmuwan MADANI was held in Kuala Lumpur on November 6, according to Lumi News, with the theme of food security and safety. It was chaired by the Prime Minister. The Natsir remarks in Anwar’s graphic were attributed to that forum, although the post itself did not say which part of the session they came from.
Reactions and context
Malay-language outlets Kosmo and MalaysiaGazette both reported the post on Wednesday. MalaysiaGazette noted that Anwar made the statement without referring to any party, and that it drew mixed reactions from followers of the Prime Minister on social media, which the outlet linked to the latest developments involving former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.
According to MalaysiaGazette, the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Tuesday issued a new order, in line with the addendum decreed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Ibrahim, for Najib to serve his sentence under house arrest with immediate effect. LNA has separately reported on those developments. Anwar’s own post did not mention Najib or the court order.
Anwar has also recently shared a hadith on equal justice, quoting a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that earlier nations were destroyed when they spared the powerful but punished the weak. As with this latest post, he did not name anyone in that message.
Source: https://x.com/anwaribrahim/status/2120389515336720586. Additional context from Kosmo, MalaysiaGazette and Lumi News.
Credit : Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s X
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