To celebrate the lunar Year of the Dog, a Giant hypermart in Klang Valley, Malaysia, released a t-shirt with 12 Chinese Zodiac animals -- sans the Dog and Pig.

While every other animal in the zodiac were represented by cutesy animal prints, images of the Dog and Pig were replaced by characters depicting their Earthly branches (戌) and (亥) respectively.

T-shirt aimed at all races

According to Free Malaysia Today, the t-shirt sold by Giant was designed for the Chinese Lunar New Year next month.

A salesperson for Giant said that the omission could be due to Giant targeting the t-shirts at 'customers of all races, including Malays'.

FMT was not able to contact the management of Giant to confirm the reason for the omission.

However, that hasn't stopped online users from debating in the comments section of FMT's Facebook post.

Most of the comments are from Chinese and Malays, who reacted negatively to the omission, citing religious differences as a moot point in this instance.

In recent years, Malaysia has become increasingly zealous in implementing shariah-compliant practices country-wide, despite being a multi-religious country.

Not the first time

This is not the first time images of pigs have been removed from public consumption in Malaysia.

For instance, the Malaysian posters of a 2016 film The Monkey King 2 had the image of Zhubajie, a pig character, removed.

For more articles on the increasing religious divide in Malaysia, read these:

H/T to Free Malaysia Today

Top image from Free Malaysia Today