Dr Zakir Naik’s Tragedy
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
Everyone knows Dr Zakir Naik in Pakistan, a physician by training, a learned scholar of comparative religions, and the founder of Peace TV. His extraordinary ability to reel off the Qur'anic and Biblical verses with equal speed, confidence and accuracy has inspired many young Muslims who after listening to his speeches read the scripture more attentively. I am not sure if they focus on the message as much, but they do memorize the exact number of every verse along with the name of its chapter (Sura). So when they quote the Qur'an in a discussion they also rattle off its numerical details. This strategy works in their favor every time, giving them an edge over their peers, boosting their confidence and making it easier for them to make their point. Try it yourself and you would also feel as if the Divine authority now resides in you.
Dr Naik is a tall man from India with an elongated face covered with a patchy, salt and pepper beard which for religious reasons stays untrimmed. A pair of glasses sits on top of his wide nose overlooking the eyes magnifying them both in size and impact. Except for the eyes (perhaps), by no means, anything strikes you in his appearance as extraordinary. Yet, you feel uncomfortable. I could not figure out until recently. However, now, I think it is the oddity of his attire that creates confusion. He wears a formal, well fitted, modern two-piece suit with a perfectly knotted necktie. What sets him apart is that while he puts on Western clothes he always covers his head with a knitted kufi cap and pulls up his pants above the ankles following the Islamic principles, an odd combination, don’t you think?
When I watched him for the first time a few years ago on television he was addressing a huge crowd. At least five thousand people had gathered to listen to his lecture. Not all of them belonged to his faith. There were Hindus, Sikhs and, yes, there were Christians as well. His popularity was soaring at that time spilling over to the neighboring states and piercing through the sectarian divides. Was his message that impressive? Or was it the blistering speed with which he fired off the verses from the Qur'an and Bible?
I think his message stood controversial from day one, sugar coating his fanaticism and covering up his intolerance. But, he rose to prominence anyway. That happened not because of his fund of knowledge, although it played an important role, but because it was the right time to have an expert on the study of comparative religions.
After 9/11, unsure of how to react to the allegations from the West, Muslims did not know how to defend their faith. Dr Naik, quite simply, through his command both on the Bible and the Qur'an, cheered them up. After listening to his lecture, instead of getting nervous about the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, every Muslim felt revitalized, confident about the supremacy of their religion and the accuracy of their scripture.
At that time, he should have stayed focused on the area of his expertise limiting his discussions to the scriptures. But, like any other religious scholar who get carried away with media attention and notoriety, he too started commenting on every subject - from international politics to evolution - in his lectures, and made the same mistake as his predecessors: combining religious facts with personal opinion. On one occasion he said that the 9/11 attack was an inside job and that he could not pronounce Osama bin Laden (OBL) a terrorist because he (Dr Naik) had not met the leader of Al Qaeda personally nor did he have any proof of OBL’s guilt. He did not stop there, and went on to say, “If bin Laden is fighting enemies of Islam, I am for him, but I am not sure if he is.” True, these comments made him unpopular in the West but here at home, as an emerging anti-imperialist scholar, his popularity graph climbed higher and higher.
As if the geo-politics was not enough, he then commented as a scientist specializing in evolution and said, “Evolution is still a theory, which has not been confirmed yet,” implying that soon new evidence would emerge which would undermine, refute or oppose the current concepts of human existence.
But the final nail he drove into the coffin of his clean reputation was his repetitive, unapologetic and incautious remarks about Yazeed, the notorious Ummayad Caliph responsible for the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussein (RA). That statement unmasked the facade of his neutral and objective approach towards religious discord, exposing him as the supporter of the doctrine promoted by Ibne Taimeyyah and followed in letter and spirit by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a pact between the House of Sauds and its religious elite. What should have happened next if you took a stance against Shiites in public in favor of Salafi doctrine? Yes, you guessed it right.
Standing next to the newly crowned King of Saudi Arabia and holding the certificate with him, Dr Zakir Naik received the most-prestigious award of the Kingdom last week. It was handed over to him in recognition of his “Service to Islam” in a ceremony hosted by the Royals, held at a splendid five star hotel. Facing the camera, a big smile runs across his face as if he truly believes he has served the religion well and has built a bridge between the hostile sects, which of course, did not happen.
The tragedy with many scholars in my opinion is that the more you want to define Islam through the eye of a single expert, the more you reject the alternate points of view, and the more you elevate yourself on a higher moral pedestal the distortion and fragmentation you are going to create in religion would be much deeper and harder to reconcile, and that is what happened to Dr Naik as well.
