Chinese coming, you had the Indians coming, the British coming. They are our new guests. You know, somebody called me a 'guest'. So I said before me [Naik is Indian] that the Chinese are the guest. They aren't born here. So if you want the new guest to go, first ask the old guest to go back." In the same lecture, he also claimed that Hindus living in Malaysia had "100 times more rights" than the Muslim minority in India, and were more loyal to Indian PM Narendra Modi than to Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad. These comments sparked outrage across Malaysian society, being perceived as inciting racial and religious hatred and disrupting the peace and harmony between communities. By 15 August, four government ministers called for revocation of Zakir Naik's permanent residency and for him to be extradited to India. Citizens lodged a total of 115 police complaints against Naik. On 16 August, Naik was questioned for about seven hours by the Royal Malaysia Police at Bukit Aman in Kuala Lumpur about his controversial statements, while PM Mahathir said that "If he is found to be doing detrimental things to the country, it will be necessary for us to take away his permanent resident status. And that case, of course, we may need to take action to prevent him from making such provocative speeches, which attempt to pit the different races against each other," adding that a public apology by Naik may not be "enough to assuage the anger of many people". Meanwhile, Sarawak, the largest state of Malaysia, banned Zakir Naik from entering the state on 15 August, while the state of Perlis barred him henceforth from speaking at public events on 16 August, followed by the state of Kedah on 17 August; Naik was scheduled to speak in both states. By 20 August, Sabah, Malacca, Penang and Selangor had joined the other three states in prohibiting Naik from speaking in public, thus barring him in 7 out of 13 Malaysian states. After another 10 hour-round of police hearings on 19 August, Free Malaysia Today reported that on 20 August the police had imposed a nationwide speaking ban on Zakir Naik, which the police confirmed to the Malay Mail. By 19 August, Zakir Naik had had his lawyers file legal complaints against five Malaysian politicians for 'defamation', claiming that they had taken his statements out of context and thus