{"id":324,"date":"2016-03-16T00:58:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T00:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=324"},"modified":"2016-03-16T00:58:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T00:58:19","slug":"zakir-naik-radical-peacetv-dhaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=324","title":{"rendered":"The Looney Tunes of Zakir Naik"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>t started a month ago, when I clicked on a video of Richard Dawkins ripping a bunch of shady \u201creligious scholars\u201d a new one while being cheered on by a crowd of atheists. Somehow, a few hours later (YouTube\u2019s autoplay is an amazing thing), I was watching someone named Dr Zakir Naik, extolling the values of his religion with a big grin plastered on his face. Out of curiosity, I fell deeper into the YouTube hole, and ended up watching nearly all of Naik\u2019s videos \u2013 during which he discusses everything from his views on women, to the fallacy of the Bible, to how \u201cCharles Darwin is just a theory\u201d.\n\n<\/p>As a non-religious person with great interest in people acting like idiots, I\u2019ve watched someone called Nirmal Baba advising a man to go play Ludo with his children so he can get \u201ckripa\u201d, a US-based Christian televangelist <\/span>yelling<\/span><\/a> \u201cmoney cometh to me NOW!\u201d, and Dr Naik claiming Muslims are more Christian than Christians themselves.\u00a0It\u2019s a testament to my belief in the plurality\u00a0of comedy, really.<\/span>\n\nToday, the televangelist is facing charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act after allegations emerged in 2016 that his sermons on his Peace TV was one of the reason behind the Dhaka restaurant attack, which left 22 people dead.\n\nWhen the allegations first emerged, the report had led to several questioning why Naik hadn\u2019t been arrested yet (by Muslim <\/span>clerics<\/span><\/a> as well). Bangladesh had already <\/span>banned<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Peace TV, and Canada and the UK had banned Naik from entering their countries.<\/span>\n\nBack then, Arnab Goswami, who was an anchor at Times Now was the worst affected by Zakir Naik. He burst a few blood vessels trying to get someone on his channel to take Naik\u2019s side, so he could rub in their faces a hate speech of his own. But for the first time ever, the Nation\u2019s Collective Shouting Conscience found a panel united with his views. Miraculously, the debate still went on for a whole hour. <\/span>\n\nZakir Naik is a man who claims <\/span>a quarter of his followers on Facebook<\/span> as well as attendees at his lectures comprise non-Muslims, but at the same time openly mocks the Bible and points out scientific inaccuracies in the Bhagwad Gita.<\/span> He has the manic ability to state a known fact and then ask a vague question like, \u201cIs it true or not? We will never know.\u201d <\/span>\n\nTake his views on Charles Darwin for instance. Naik has a beautiful argument against Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution. Why won\u2019t he believe it? Because, \u201cdear brothers, Charles Darwin\u2019s evolution is still <\/span>only a theory<\/span><\/a>\u201d. How does he back up this claim? Because, \u201cdear brothers\u201d, there is no proof that the animals on the \u201ckeletropist\u201d island (he means Galapagos) behaved the way brother Darwin said they did. <\/span>\n\nZakir Naik is so fond of being wrong about things, there\u2019s an\u00a0<\/span>actual video<\/span><\/a> on YouTube of somebody pointing out a whopping 25 mistakes he makes in five minutes of speech. At the end of this video, he claims Galileo was sentenced to death (he wasn\u2019t) and Homo sapiens went extinct years ago (clearly we haven\u2019t). Then, to back these claims up, he names a string of imaginary people with names like Ruperts Albert, Sir Frank Salosbury, and (incredibly) Sir Whitemeat. <\/span>\n\nTrying to understand Islam through the eyes of Zakir Naik, is like trying to understand the concept of love on Tinder. <\/span>At lectures, <\/span>he says<\/span><\/a>, non-Muslims are encouraged to be the first to ask questions, which may as well be true. But in response to these questions, he bombards them with random verses of the Quran, the Gita, and the Bible, all off the top of his head, with no notes or prompts. <\/span>\n

He tries his best to convert every\u00a0person who attends his speeches, but most times fails spectacularly. Still, he goes about unfazed, trying his best.<\/blockquote>\nHis views on Islam\u2019s stance\u00a0on women are pretty <\/span>confusing<\/span><\/a>. He doesn\u2019t believe women are subjugated. When asked why women aren\u2019t allowed to divorce men, he replies because the woman is on the \u201creceiving side of marriage\u201d. \u201cUnder normal circumstances, the man has been given authority to divorce his wife. Why? Because in marriage, the person who is the loser is the man, not the woman.\u201d He then quotes a verse in the Quran that says women should be given a gift (Mahr) when they\u2019re getting married. Using the verse he comes to the wholly logical conclusion that if the woman was given the right to divorce, she could remarry, and hence \u201ckeep on getting money\u201d. Whereas the man would have to continue paying Mahr. \u201cSo who is the loser? The man.\u201d <\/span>\n\nDespite the complete lack of cohesion in his answers, though, he always starts his replies with the charming, \u201c<\/span>Brother always asks good, intellectual questions.\u201d Combine this with his confidence, big smile and ability to ridicule anyone else with ease, and you\u2019ll see how he\u2019s quickly achieved Top Cleric status among his several fans.<\/span>\n\nOne thing I don\u2019t fully understand is how anyone could possibly get \u201cradicalised\u201d by this person, despite his amazing oratory skills and seemingly off-the-cuff arguments. He tries his best to convert every\u00a0person who attends his speeches, but most times fails spectacularly. Still, he goes about unfazed, trying his best. Yes he has bad things to say about other religions, but considering how informed most of his other opinion is, should we really take it this seriously?<\/span>\n\nIn my mind, Zakir Naik\u2019s speeches are about as dangerous as Elmer Fudd is to Bugs Bunny. He could provoke some fear, but most of the time, he\u2019s just being silly. Occasionally Elmer Fudd would drop his shotgun and injure an animal by accident. But could we really blame him for that? <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to understand how anyone could get radicalised by Zakir Naik. He might invent people at random and think humans have gone extinct. But that\u2019s all folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[62,63,64,65,66,67,578,579,580,581,520,71,72,582],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-originals","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-arre-website","tag-atheist","tag-dhaka","tag-peace-tv","tag-radical","tag-religion","tag-web-series","tag-web-shows","tag-zakir-naik"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Looney Tunes of Zakir Naik<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s hard to understand how anyone could get radicalised by Zakir Naik. 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