Dr Zakir Naik – a man with a mission. With a mission of Dawah.  Superficially speaking, Dawah means `inviting'. Dr Naik does this in his typical style. He is not quite an orthodox. Blessed with a extraordinary memory he uses this to the best of his ability, and thus has made many fans particularly in our own Kashmir. Many people get influenced by his speeches. According to him people need not trust anything blindly. But he trusts science blindly and doesn’t this proposition apply to him as well. He always quotes and unquote words to the best of his ability to explain questions thrown at him.  Dr Zakir being a medical doctor by himself uses facts in science as an evidence for the holy book of Qur'an. But why does he at first place do it. Does Qur'an need science? Qur'an is an ultimate book of absolute truth but science is a dynamic, relative knowledge.  How can Dr. Naik use a relative thing to explain correctness of an absolute thing? Science is just garbage of human minds. Do we really need it to verify the word of God?  By doing so Dr Zakir is just placing God on lie detector test of science.  For instance he totally agrees with scientists on genetics. But may be after a few years a good scientist disagrees with the already existing information of genetics and gives a totally new theory acceptable to whole of scientific community. God forbid does it mean that our Qur'an didn’t explain genetics well .Won't it push the non believers back to their respective religions who got converted just because Dr Naik proved that genetics explained in Qur'an corresponds to biology. There is just no point using science when it suits you and criticizing science when it doesn’t suit you. We as Muslims should have blind faith in God. Then why does Dr. Naik give us justifications about his existence. He is often clapped by a monotonous audience for doing this.  But what really do they clap for, for proving that they are majority in hall and person who posed any question for clarification is a fool.
              
Secondly Dr Naik is the biggest believer of conspiracy theories. There is no point calling him a representative of Muslims, as he at first place doesn’t accept the harsh realities and bitter facts. He doesn’t believe that there is a man called Osama in this world! He is of the opinion that every terrorist attack is carried out by FBI in this world and Muslims are gentle lambs waiting for the Jewish butchers to chop them. He instead of condemning terror acts like 9/11 uses it to describe high rate of religious conversions towards Islam. For God's sake is there something called humanity left in you. For a moment let us trust him on the thing that a big conspiracy is being hatched by FBI to defame Muslims but what about terror activities like Darfur, a white Muslims killing a black Muslims. Is this a conspiracy theory or will Dr Zakir say that there is no place in this world called Darfur. Let us face the truth. Islam doesn’t teach terror but there are Muslim youth who feel inheritance of loss and injustice done to them by history. So there is a need for addressing these issues rather than putting blames on FBI and waving conspiracy theories. Dr. Naik always criticizes media particularly CNN and BBC for defaming Islam. But it was only BBC which never dubbed Afghan war as war on terror. It is the media like BBC which brought the plight of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian refugees into light. So why label whole media as biased, just to get an excuse to launch your own news channel.         

 Today Zakir Naik has many followers, but lot of them are more of his fans. Unlike his teacher Ahmad Deedat he doesn’t care about ill effects of personality cult thereby creating a self styled group of youth who prefer daawa and discussions more than anything else. Thus no wonder if after a few years there comes another group called Naikees.

Dr Zakir Naik is making IRF a family business, everyone from his brother to kids are more like celebrities on TV. As if they are the last Muslim family left in this world. With time Dr. Naik has learnt a lot of TV tricks. One hardly can manage to hide a giggle when he poses for cameras or for that matter walks in a peculiar style as if walking on a ramp for a Italian suit designer.  This all speaks of nothing but flippancy and non-seriousness.
Scholarship demands profundity, not this flamboyance. He must learn to be more serious.

(The writer is a student    of B.Pharmacy in University of Kashmir and can be mailed at umademess@gmail.com).

Lastupdate on : Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 IST