Khalid Abdul Samad

Khalid bin Abdul Samad (Jawi: خالد بن عبدالصمد; born 14 August 1957) is a Malaysian politician who served as the Minister of Federal Territories in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad from July 2018 to the collapse of the PH administration in February 2020 and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Shah Alam from March 2008 to November 2022.

He is a member, Communications Director and State Chairman of Kelantan of the National Trust Party (AMANAH), a component party of the PH coalition and was a member of the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), a former component party of the former Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Alternatif (BA) coalitions.

He is also the younger brother of Shahrir Abdul Samad, former Minister and MP of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

Before PH and BN formed the federal coalition government in November 2022, they were opposing politically as both of them were in opposing political sides.

Khalid was born in Kota Bharu, Kelantan in 1957.

He graduated with a degree in Fuel and Energy Engineering from Leeds University in 1979 and then worked for Petronas.

Khalid joined PAS in 1983 and became a central committee member from 1987 to 1993.

He had unsuccessfully contested as PAS candidate the parliamentary seats of Kuala Krai (1986), Arau (1990), Sri Gading (1999) and Shah Alam (2004) in the general elections before finally won the Shah Alam seat in the 2008 general election and retained it in the 2013 general election.

In 1987, he was detained for nine months under the Internal Security Act (ISA) during Operation Lalang crackdown.

Khalid also added that it was not an easy decision to leave Shah Alam where he had served as MP from 2008 to 2022 for three terms and 14 years.

He lost the election to Johari Abdul Ghani from BN and UMNO by a minority of 4,632 votes by garnering 20,410 votes.

His defeat also paved the way for Johari to return as Titiwangsa MP and is the only electoral defeat of PH in Kuala Lumpur.

In 2010, Khalid became engaged in a debate with fellow opposition (later pro-government independent) Member of Parliament Zulkifli Nordin over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims.

After Khalid stated that he opposed a Selangor law that prohibited non-Muslims from using the word "Allah", Zulkifli lodged a police report accusing Khalid of sedition.

Zulkifi, a Kedah MP, moved to Selangor to run in the Shah Alam seat against Khalid in the 2013 election as a Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate, but was beaten by Khalid who was re-elected with an increased margin.

In August 2014, Khalid was charged under Section 4 of the Sedition Act for allegedly questioning the executive powers of the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) in relation to the confiscation of Malay-language and Iban-language bibles.

Khalid was among several other opposition politicians as well as non-politicians arrested in the 2014 Malaysian sedition dragnet.

He was a columnist at The Malaysian Insider and a prominent member of the moderate wing of PAS before they split to found AMANAH in 2015.

Khalid again managed to retain the Shah Alam seat in the 2018 general election but the first time for the Amanah party and was soon selected as the new PH coalition federal government cabinet minister.

On 23 October 2022, AMANAH election director Asmuni Awi revealed that Khalid would contest for the Titiwangsa federal seat in the 2022 general election.

Asmuni also commented that AMANAH was taking risk to field Khalid to contest for the seat instead of the Shah Alam federal seat which is the stronghold of Khalid.