Malaysia, a primarily Muslim country located in peninsular and insular regions of Southeast Asia, has a government heavily influenced by Islamic law, which expresses anti-heretical and anti-atheist views.
As censuses only allow participants to name Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and traditional Chinese religions as their faith, irreligious Malaysians end up with Sikhs (around 350,000) in the 2.1% who do not list any of the above.
Apostasy is also not a federal crime, however, the nation's state-run courts do not typically allow Muslims to officially leave the religion, and they can receive counseling, fines, or jail time.
[3] In 2016, Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was disgraced by corruption, denounced atheism, secularism, liberalism, and humanism as threats to "Islam and the state".
[6] The Diplomat writer David Hutt claimed that he knew pro-democracy activists from Vietnam who were less hesitant to publicly criticize the Communist Party than atheist Malaysians to simply talk about religion in coffee shops.