Why Muslim Ulema Should Confront Zakir Naik? How Does He Encourage Islamist Terrorism?

"If Osama bin Laden is fighting the enemies of Islam, I’m for him. If he is terrorising America, the terrorist, biggest terrorist, I’m with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorising the terrorist, he is following Islam. Whether he is or not, I don’t know. Now, don’t go around outside saying Zakir Naik is for Osama bin Laden. If he is terrorising the terrorist I’m with him."

This is the quote of the week. Here Dr. Zakir Naik, the controversial but popular Islamist tele-evangelist is reacting to a question about Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 that killed 3,000 innocent Americans. He doubts Osama bin Laden’s role in 9/11, as many Muslims and even American conspiracy theorists do. They think 9/11 was an inside job. Dr. Naik plays on this sentiment. He clearly supports terrorism, and goes on to say, every Muslim should be a terrorist in the sense of terrorising “enemies of Islam.” Now the question is: Who gives Naik the authority to sanction “terrorising” any one? Also: who are these “enemies of Islam” today?

To find an answer any follower of Zakir Naik would go to the literal words of the holy Quran. Naik is a Wahhabi-Salafi-Ahl-e-Hadeesi who has full Saudi financial and logistical support. He recently received Saudi Arabia’s highest civilian award, the Shah Faisal Award consisting of $200,000 and a gold plaque. Wahhabis consider themselves ghair-muqallids, i.e., Muslims who do not follow any of the five mazahib or schools of thought like, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi΄i, Hanbali and Ja‘fari.  Muslims on the Indian sub-continent used to follow the most broad-minded and moderate school of thought, the Hanafi, before the advent of Saudi Wahhabism in full force 40 years ago. The distinguishing feature of this sect is literalism. They read the Quran literally and consider all verses equally relevant, universal and eternal in their applicability to Muslims of all ages and all places.

So any Muslim who accepts Naik’s exhortation that Muslims should terrorise “the enemies of Islam,” would consult the Quran. Internet has made it much easier to access various renderings of Quran, as well as tafasir (exegesis and interpretations). The spirit of Quran, the overall sense of what the Quran is saying, a holistic view that the Sufis and moderates take, is completely missing in Wahhabi-Salafi Islam that Zakir Naik propagates.

 Now what would a victim of Naik who takes him as a great scholar on the basis of his rote memory find in the Quran? Before we go into this question, we should acquire a little background of the advent of Islam, otherwise we are likely to be misguided in the same way the Indian Mujahedin or the Dhaka youth were. The Islam that came in Mecca with its foundational verses was a spiritual path to salvation of mankind. It taught honesty, integrity, equality of all humanity in the dominion of One invisible, formless God, patience and perseverance in dealing with other human beings and in the face of adversity, co-existence of all religions, good neighbourliness, gender equality, etc. However, the Meccan elite could not accept equality of all human beings, which brought them at par with the lowly, the poor and the slaves. They started persecuting Muslims and eventually planned to assassinate the Prophet. The prophet and most Muslims left and took refuge in another town, later called Medina. The Meccans followed them. A point reached when the only way for Muslims to survive was to defend themselves. At this point, 13 years after the advent of Islam, they were permitted to fight in defence and kill those who had turned them out of their houses only for having a different religion.

In is natural for the Quranic revelations, that were guiding the Prophet and his followers, to ask Muslims to defend themselves, fight and kill, terrify, put panic in the hearts of their enemies in those wars. So when a follower of Dr Zakir Naik, who has heard that “every Muslim should be a terrorist for the enemies of Islam,” goes to Quran and finds war-time, contextual verses like 9: 5, 3:151, 8:60, etc, and takes them literally as an exhortation valid for even today, he is likely to go astray, particularly in the absence of any contrary opinion.

Author's Note

The Author has been write in the field of Sultan Shahin