“When the engine of an aircraft starts shaking and threatens to rip off, I believe all the passengers would be praying in their respective ways. There was no need for the pilot (to ask them to pray) and add to their anxiety,” he said in a blog post today.

He added that he was not against praying, and that many who had “hammered” him for his remark did not understand it.

The issue was not whether it was appropriate to seek “divine intervention” but whether it was appropriate for the pilot to ask the passengers to do so, he said.

AirAsia X flight D7237, which left Perth, Western Australia, on Sunday, was heading to Kuala Lumpur but returned to Perth shortly after take-off after the pilot announced a “technical problem”.

An explosion reportedly occurred in the left engine as one of the blades on the turbine had broken off. The plane landed safely.

However, many passengers were surprised by the flight captain telling them to “say a prayer” that the plane would land safely.

Zaid criticised AirAsia, saying the airline should engage a proper imam if it was “big into prayers”.

Yesterday, however, AirAsia Bhd chairman Kamarudin Meranun defended the pilot for asking the passengers to pray during the emergency.

“What is wrong, when faced with an acute situation, in asking people to pray according to their religions for divine intervention while taking all humanly possible actions?” he said.

Zaid said he was not questioning the human instinct to pray in that kind of situation.

He drew a comparison between the emergency on the plane and the situation of a person just going into surgery.

“For example, if you are about to be operated on by a heart surgeon, and suddenly he asks you and all your family members to say a prayer, wouldn’t this convey the impression that you are in an acute situation and could die?

“Is this what we want from a pilot or a surgeon?”

Zaid also rejected the allegation that he did not pray, as expressed by PAS MP Nik Mohamad Abduh Nik Aziz.

Hitting out at the PAS leader for his “arrogance and self-declared devoutness”, Zaid said this sort of attitude was an “old disease among PAS members”.

“Nik Abduh has made many other accusations to humiliate me on Facebook, and I don’t forget easily. I will follow up with other actions in future,” he said.

Nik Abduh had written on Facebook asking Zaid “when he would pray to God”.

“I pray that when his time comes, Dato Zaid Ibrahim’s piety would emerge. Let Allah in his wisdom show that he (Zaid), who craves a long life, would be forced to pray to God,” he said.

Zaid said the issue of praying or not did not arise, adding that he was convinced Nik Abduh did not understand his remark on the pilot.

“Actually, this does not surprise me because Nik Abduh also does not understand 1MDB, which is easy to understand,” he said.

AirAsia boss backs pilot for suggesting prayer on tense flight