India : The Notorious Dr. Zakir Naik

By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

He supports Al Qaeda on his television channel: He says, "If he Osama Bin Laden is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him. If he is terrorizing the terrorists, if he is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist."

He is a Muslim clergyman, Dr. Zakir Naik, who runs a huge organization, named Islamic Research Foundation. With the slogan,´'Solution for Humanity,´' Dr. Zakir not only tries to project Bible, Torah and other Holy Scriptures as fake or changed; he also promotes the idea of jihad and Islamist aggressions.

He recommends the death penalty for homosexuals and for apostasy from the faith, which he likens to wartime treason. He calls for India to be ruled by the medieval tenets of Shariah law. He supports a ban on the construction of non-Muslim places of worship in Muslim lands and the Taliban's bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas. He says revealing clothes make Western women "more susceptible to rape." Not surprisingly, Dr. Naik believes that Jews "control America" and are the "strongest in enmity to Muslims."

Earlier this year, the Indian Express listed him as the country's 89th most powerful person, ahead of Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen, eminent lawyer and former attorney general Soli Sorabjee, and former Indian Premier League cricket commissioner Lalit Modi. Dr. Zakir Naik's satellite TV channel, Peace TV, claims a global viewership of up to 50 million people in 125 countries.

Although it is not suggested that Naik is directly involved in terrorism, following known terrorists have reportedly been inspired by his preaching :

•     Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan-American arrested last year for planning suicide attacks on the New York subway;
•     Rahil Sheikh, accused of involvement in a series of train bombings in Mumbai in 2006 and;
•     Kafeel Ahmed, the Bangalore man fatally injured in a failed suicide attack on Glasgow Airport in 2007.

Since June 2010, this man has been denied entry into United Kingdom and Canada for his support of Islamist terrorism and Jihad and his advocacy of Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist outfits in the world.

A few weeks ago, he was banned from entering the United Kingdom, where he had arranged to give some talks in London and Sheffield. by the Home Secretary Theresa May. May said of the exclusion order, "Numerous comments made by Dr. Naik are evidence to me of his unacceptable behavior," and noted statements from Naik such as, "Every Muslim should be a terrorist."

Khushwant Singh, a prominent Indian journalist, politician and author, argues that Naik's pronouncements are "juvenile" and says that "they seldom rise above the level of undergraduate college debates, where contestants vie with each other to score brownie points."

Singh also replied to Zakir Naik's statement that "Western society claims to have uplifted women. On the contrary, it has actually degraded them to the status of concubines, mistresses, and society butterflies who are mere tools in the hands of pleasure seekers and sex marketers…." by saying, "Dr. Naik, you know next to nothing about the Western society and are talking through your skull cap. People like you are making the Muslims lag behind other communities." Singh further noted that Naik's audiences "... listen to him with rapt attention and often explode in enthusiastic applause when he rubbishes other religious texts ..."

Zakir Naik continues to make anti-Semitic statements in his 'lectures' on Peace TV and other platforms; on record, he says, "Jews are our staunchest enemy."

Peace TV programs reach millions of households in the West, including United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Australia; and several so-called "community mosques" in United States and UK regularly distribute books and DVDs containing lectures of Dr. Zakir Naik to young Muslims and non-Muslims.

While the Muslim press was continuing to paint Zakir Naik as a 'Hero of Islam', only one newspaper, the Weekly Blitz (full disclosure: ours) continued to publish articles and editorials critical of him.

Dr. Naik operates this channel from Brtain from heavy donation and contribution by Muslims as a part of their Zakat [tithe], as well as donations from various Afro-Arab sources.

Speakers in PeaceTV, who regularly appear in the programs are Dr. Zakir Naik (India), Ahmed Deedat (South Africa), Dr. Bilal Philips (Canada), Yassir Fazaga(USA), Abdur Rahim Green (UK), Hussein Ye (Malaysia), Dr. Jafar Idris (Sudan), Salem Al Amry (UAE), Dr. Israr Ahmed (Pakistan), Maulana Parekh (India) etc. But only one person occupies almost 65 per cent of the program segments: Dr. Zakir Naik.

In one of the programs on PeaceTV, Dr. Zakir Naik said in Urdu that Jesus Christ never claimed to be a Christian -- of course, he was not; he was a Jew. According to Zakir, however, Jesus was also a Muslim. Apparently Dr. Zakir wanted to convince the audience that, since ancient times, there is no divine religion except Islam in this world.

Commenting on Dr. Zakir Naik, the eminent Indian sociologist Imtiaz Ahmed said, "Brought up on the heavy dose of Saudi Arabia-backed Salafist-Wahabi Islam, Naik follows a supremacist ideology. The Saudis think they have a divine right to convert Muslims across the world into a puritanical Salafist Islam. Naik is their public face."
Source : Gatestone Institute