Here’s Zakir Naik, ‘Fundamentalist, not Fanatic’

‘‘He is doing a service to Muslims by removing any wrong notions about Islam that may have crept into non-Muslim minds,’’ says Bakali, the 49-year-old father of three. ‘‘It lifts my mood, I get a sense of elation.’’

Bakali is just one of millions across the world who regularly tune in to hear Dr Zakir Naik, 39, a lanky, bearded, bespectacled scholar committed to ‘‘removing misconceptions about Islam.’’

Quoting from the Quran and a host of other scriptures, Naik is heard from Boston to Beirut, Paris to Port Blair, mainly through six channels of the Dubai-based Abdul Razzak Yaqoob (ARY) Digital Network.

‘‘He is acquiring cult status among our viewers,’’ Tariq Wasi, ARY’s vice-president (operations) told the The Sunday Express from Dubai. Besides the 24-hour Q-TV, which is immensely popular in Muslim homes in India and Pakistan, Naik is available for 30 minutes daily on ARY’s five other entertainment channels uplinked from Dubai.

‘‘At a recent studio lecture, Naik fielded dozens of questions, many from the Christian world,’’ says Wasi.

So is Naik an integrationist or a regular Islamic hardliner in modern garb?

Seated in his book-lined office of the Islamic Research Foundation, the centre he founded in 1991, off a dusty lane in Dongri in Central Mumbai’s teeming Muslim heart, Naik denies that he’s trying to prove Islam’s supremacy.

‘‘I am a fundamentalist,’’ he says, ‘‘not a fanatic.’’

A Muslim from the Konkan, Maharashtra’s lush coastal edge, Naik insists he speaks of common ground between religions. ‘‘I plead that we leave the differences aside, and celebrate commonality,’’ he says.

One of Naik’s oft-quoted ‘‘commonalities’’ between Islam and Hinduism is a controversial one: a negation of idol worship. Though Islam’s rejection of idolatory is well-known, Naik says even Hinduism opposes idol worship.

‘‘Yajurveda, chapter 32, verse 3, says that God has no images,’’ he says. Naik also cites a relevant ‘‘admonition’’ from the Yajurveda, Chapter 40, Verse 9, about idol worship: ‘‘If you worship material things (assambhati), you’re entering darkness.’’

‘‘I back my arguments with logic and scriptural proofs,’’ says Naik, an MBBS and a surgeon who put down his scalpel to ‘‘defend Islam’’.

While doing the second year of his MBBS at Mumbai’s Nair Hospital in the late 1980s, Naik met Ahmed Deedar, a noted Islamic scholar from South Africa, and changed for ever.

‘‘After I met him, I told myself surgery was not my goal. Countering the lies and the half-truths about Islam became my mission,’’ he says.

Reading the scriptures widely—IRF’s library houses over 10,000 books, mostly religious texts from all religions—he has memorised dozens of verses.

After 9/11, Naik is frequently asked whether Islam supports terrorism. ‘‘Islam is clear about it. Killing an innocent is akin to killing the entire humanity,’’ he says, ‘‘still, Islam is demonised.’’

His fans certainly don’t regard him as a fanatic. ‘‘He doesn’t use rhetoric and always reiterates the good message. He keeps his cool even when someone asks a provocative question,’’ says Iqbal Masalawalla, a garment seller at Mumbai’s Mohammed Ali Road, who watches Naik regularly.

‘‘He has a lucid style of talking about Islam and other religions. I find him quite convincing,’’ says D S Chauhan, an Air Traffic Controller (ATC) at Mumbai’s Sahar Airport.

Once at a lecture in Bhiwandi, some local Shiv Sena leaders verbally attacked Naik till many Hindus among the audience came to his rescue.

Naik insists that, like Islam, Hinduism too asks its followers to go for jihad. ‘‘In Bhagvad Gita (Chapter 2, Verse 37), Krishna tells Arjun that he should fight. If he gets killed he will enter swarg,’’ he says.

‘‘Krishna endorses war, but for a right cause. Similarly, in Islam, jihad means to strive, to struggle. Jihad against one’s own weaknesses is a bigger jihad.’’

Though Naik speaks in English, his speeches are dubbed in Hindi as well. He doesn’t charge for the lectures, nor are his VCDs sold—you can hire and copy them.

‘‘I have no copyright on anything that we produce. I will not mind if someone copies my cassettes and books and sells them,’’ says Naik, who’s published a dozen booklets, including Quran & Modern Science, Islam & Terrorism.