KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 — The Royal Malaysian Customs is holding back the latest edition of The Economist for “unknown reasons”, the London-based magazine has now said after earlier notifying local subscribers that delivery was delayed due to “sensitive content”.

But both the Customs Department and Home Ministry are denying knowledge of the purported delay, with former agency saying it did not even know where the consignment of the magazine’s July 5 issue was currently kept.

“Please be advised that the 5th July 2014 issue was held to Customs due to unknown reason,” a spokesman of the magazine’s subscription centre told The Malay Mail Online via email.

When contacted over the delay, however, the Customs Department was unable to confirm the enforcement, saying it was unaware of the consignment’s current location.

“Usually, Customs only block magazines which has sexually obscene elements in them,” said one department official who declined to be named.

The Home Ministry’s Publication and Quranic Texts Control Division secretary Hashimah Nik Jaafar said it did not encounter any “problems” with the latest edition of The Economist.

“Furthermore, we have no authority over the Customs Department. We cannot just give orders to them,” she added, when told that the magazine was ostensibly being held by the Customs agency.

Malaysian subscribers of the magazine received an email three days ago informing them that the latest edition would be delayed.

“Due to sensitive content in the July 5th 2014 print edition of The Economist, there has been a delay in distribution,” said the email.

The magazine’s subscription centre told The Malay Mail Online that it was not told which article or part of the edition was deemed “sensitive”.

The latest edition features an article titled “The tragedy of Arabs” on its front page, which details the fall of the Arab world that used to be a superpower, and the subsequent “Arab Spring” revolutions.

There are also articles on the Indonesian presidential elections and human evolution.

The delay does not affect subscribers to the digital edition of the magazine.

In March this year, an edition of the magazine that featured several controversial articles on Malaysia, was seized by the Royal Malaysian Customs, causing a delay in distribution.

The March seizure was confirmed by a Home Ministry representative, but no reason was given for the action.

The news magazine has upset Malaysian authorities in the past, leading to several articles censored or blotted out allegedly for being detrimental to the country’s image.

Between January 2009 and August 2010, Malaysia censored 11 issues of the weekly.

In 2011, parts of an article describing Putrajaya’s handling of the rights group Bersih’s popular rally in July that year as overzealous, were blacked out by local distributors.

In 2009, the weekly’s Christmas issue showing Adam and Eve was censored in five countries, including in Malaysia. Authorities covered Eve’s bare breasts.