SINGAPORE: Earlier this week, authorities ordered the social media accounts of Zulfikar Bin Mohamad Shariff to be disabled in Singapore under the Online Criminal Harms Act.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Nov 26 (Wednesday), Zulfikar “has repeatedly continued to stir up discontent within the local Malay/Muslim community against the Chinese community in Singapore” and “has incited feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will and hostility against, contempt for and ridicule of different racial and religious groups in Singapore.”
The ministry, together with the Singapore Police Force, has deemed Zulfikar’s social media posts to be offences under Singapore’s Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act. Therefore, they have issued an account restriction direction to TikTok to disable his account on the platform, as well as a disabling direction to Meta, doing the same for Zulfikar’s Facebook page.
“This would stop Zulfikar’s accounts/pages from further communicating in Singapore, and harming our racial and religious harmony,” the statement reads.
Who is Zulfikar Bin Mohamad Shariff?
Zulfikar, 54, renounced his Singapore citizenship in 2020 and is an Australian citizen, having moved there with his family in 2002.
In 2016, Zulfikar was detained under the Internal Security Act when authorities found that he had promoted terrorism, specifically the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This “online glorification” of ISIS contributed to the radicalisation of at least two other Singaporeans.
MHA added that Zulfikar had called for Muslims to reject the constitutional, secular, and democratic state in favour of an Islamic state governed by Syariah law. Furthermore, he believed that if needed, violence should be used to achieve this goal.
When he was arrested, he admitted to having entered Singapore with his Singapore passport but did not disclose that he had Australian citizenship. In 2013, he also falsely declared to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) that he held citizenship in another country because he did not want to give up his Singapore citizenship at the time. Singapore does not allow dual citizenship for adults.
He was later jailed for six weeks after pleading guilty to one charge under the Passports Act of making a false statement in the application.
As for his more recent actions, he posted a video on TikTok on July 19, 2025, that falsely claimed that Malay Muslims were forced to move away from Islam and assimilate into the Chinese community in Singapore. This is just one example of the similarly inflammatory content in his posts and videos.
Moreover, members of the public have provided feedback to the authorities regarding Zulfikar’s posts, which include a number of police reports that say the content is a threat to Singapore’s racial and religious harmony.
At present, the police have launched investigations into Zulfikar’s “egregious conduct.”
“The Singapore Government takes a very serious view of threats to our racial and religious disharmony, including from foreigners, and will not hesitate to act against them,” the MHA added. /TISG
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