Zakir Naik & The Idiocy

     







       A few days back, I was re-reading George Orwell's essay, 'Why I write?'  which is one of my favourite essays written by Orwell. In that essay Orwell describes with immense honesty about his love and passion for writing. The aftermath of me reading that essay had questions inside my head about why I write. My mind flooded with thoughts and ideas, some very naive to be honest, about what drives me to write. It may be passion it may be some outrage, it is something which has to come out which then leads us to manipulate letters from A to Z and then lay down our opinion.  So, when I thought of writing this article, I discovered how idiocy of the people around you can encourage you to write.
      
          Zakir Naik has been one such person who plays the role of someone we call an opinion leader in media and elsewhere. Such people have the ability to make or break things, to worsen or to strengthen situations. I have seen his lectures (of course on the internet and not live). I never like people who have a religious outlook on the matters of everyday affairs,  Naik is no such exception. I personally never look up to his videos, but sometimes here and there on the internet somethings pops up which makes me watch his videos. To be very blunt, his lectures are simply stupid and and statements made without proper base of reality and facts to it. He is one such person who lacks the ability of political terminology or simple terminology to be precise. He has a well versed modern day brain made to work according to the needs of media and people. He lacks philosophy, his claims over the matters of religion reach the highest point of human manipulation. Let me give you  an example of a video that I watched; here a Hindu person asks Zakir Naik that, and I quote, "According to you, Islam is the only true religion which has to be followed by mankind, so what does this makes our Hindu Gods like Vishnu or Ganpati?" A very frequently asked question to many Islamic scholars to which I expected some answer with logic, but here Naik says, " From Adam to Muhammad, there were total 124,000 Prophets among which 313 were the Messengers of God. Out of that 313 only 25 are known, so the remaining Prophets whom are not mentioned in the Qur'an can be the Hindu Gods you pray". Now any literate man would have problems with Zakir Naik after reading this answer.  We, in the subcontinent, irrespective of the religion, have this knack of believing stories about religion coming from any Tom, Dick and Harry.

         Now that we have talked about the stupidity that is involved in the lectures of Zakir Naik, let us now turn towards the matter which would actually gain views on this blog; the recent controversy of Zakir Naik and the terrorist attack due to which he came into limelight. Agreed and strongly condemn the lectures of Zakir Naik, but simultaneously the part that the media is portraying him  as a terrorist isn't completely right, either. He is a one from the modern day hypocrites who turn towards human sentiments to earn a living with immense PR skills. (Hypocrite; one reason being, he criticises and condemns western culture and conducts all of his lectures in English and well ironed four piece suit). But he cannot be labelled as a terrorist. The media purposely covers people like Sadhvi Prachi and other prominent VHP leaders, and then end up giving very open ending headlines which are open for misunderstandings. Believe it or not, such news in a fast world where news and opinions are made within passing moments, can be harmful for the secular fabric of the country. This widing divide is very dangerous for our country. Muslims may see this as an incident where a Muslim person is facing media trial when the counterparts of the same person but on the other shore walk away with similar comments without any havoc. Whereas, the Hindus would view Naik as a Muslim face and would correspond him to the remaining community.

        The amount of criticism Naik faces from the non-Muslim community is not even the half of what he faces from the Muslim community itself. But, from the people who follow Sufism or who follow Auliyaas and the dargah. Here, people tend to see Muslims under one common umbrella, but there is a whole lot which cannot be explained in this article. (Not just Shea-Sunni). Coming back to the point, the Muslim criticising Zakir Naik don't try to be euphemistic, as he bashes the people who follow Islam in a different way. Not because, I have a slight inclination towards the Sufi ideology due to its history and culture and for all beautiful things, but based on facts and numbers I say that, whatever the terrorism is coming out of Islam(which is 1.5-2% of the total population) it mostly has its links to Wahabism. And history has proven that such people like Zakir Naik who claim to be the people who spread Islam, don't take much long to manipulate the hadith and put it falsely in front

Naik during one of his lectures on his satellite channel 'Peace TV'

of people who have very little knowledge about it.  So, in a way its good that its going to be a ban on his lectures. Matters of faith, according to me should be kept in a different plate and not with criticism. Because such things don't have any base of reality to it but a strong; very strong belief of the mankind. No one has the right to challenge this belief, not even Zakir Naik!