Subramaniam said UTM’s decision to sack the lecturer was a step in the right direction to remove any parties who “acted unilaterally” in regards to preparing learning materials.

“I made very strong representations in the Cabinet.

“(Higher Education Minister) Idris Jusoh took a serious note of our comments.

“Subsequently, when they analysed the issue, they found the module was not what the university had prescribed.

“We were told that the slides were developed by the lecturer himself and not the university. Hence the decision to terminate the lecturer,” he told reporters here today.

Earlier today, Idris told Klang Valley-based BFM89.9 radio station that the lecturer behind the viral slides mocking Hinduism and Sikhism was sacked by UTM.

Subramaniam said the case should be a reminder to all academicians and universities to be careful about learning materials offered to students.

“It should not be confusing and creating problems.”

The controversial lecture materials, in the form of slides for UTM’s Tamadun Islam Tamadun Asia (Titas) subject, had caused an uproar among the Hindu and Sikh communities after the contents went viral recently.

Titas has been made a mandatory subject for all tertiary students since 2013. Critics say that the subject was to push Islamic supremacy in the country.

The subject came under further scrutiny after a local private university taught that al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden “might not have existed”.

Malay Mail Online reported that the lecturer told some 100 students that the 2001 suicide airplane attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City were used by the West as an excuse to persecute Muslims.

“He said that Osama could have been a creation, that he didn’t really exist,” a student told the news portal.

“He commented on how in his videos, Osama only speaks ‘3 seconds of Arabic’ and then everything else was in English.”