Is Zakir Naik a victim of his success?

 Another innocent man is under media trial for no apparent cause except for the fact that he is a Muslim and propagates the teachings of Islam across the world. Indian media, well known for their partial representation of portraying innocent men as a “terrorists” and terrorists as a “heroes”in this case have found their next victim inDr.Naik.

Dr.Naik is a great Islamic preacher who has always tried to spread peace and serenity in the world through his intellectual and thought provoking speeches so that every common man can witness and understand the true meaning and message of Islam and other religions. He has gained wide acceptability from both Muslim and non-Muslim communities through his speeches and lectures which are available on YouTube. He, in his talks has always emphasized that there is no place for terrorism in Islam and he being a Muslim would never support terrorism and the convoluted and highly twisted ideologies of ISIS. He has constantly in many of his lectures quoted the verse from the holy Quran which states that “killing one innocent man is killing whole humanity” ( Chap 5, verse 32).

It would not take rocket science to understand that the allegations levelled against Dr.Naik are fake, irrelevant and devoid of any rational basis whatsoever. The nature in which this entire false propaganda against Dr.Naik has been carried out in itself is a proof that these frivolous accusations are aimed to attack his work and defame Islam in general. This is not the first time that he has been quoted out of context, and his statements cherry picked. Given the existing state of affairs this won’t be the last time either. Although on many occasions he has spoken out against terrorism and univocally condemned all acts of violence, the media is always biased in their opinion about him.

Going by the sheer statistics, officially Dr.Naik has 14million followers on social media and 200 million viewers on peace TV alone. If one were to believe that Dr.Naik inspired terrorism then he would have been successfully able to raise an army of hate mongers and terrorists, which obviously does not seem to be the case.

If the media and government views him as someone who poses a threat to the peaceful functioning of our society then why haven’t they filed a case against him and followed the lawful procedure prescribed by our constitution instead of calling him a terrorist and jihadist and what not. It is also quite astonishing to see“justice” Arnab Goswami handling this issue in the most prejudiced manner possible by making a mockery of the upright institution of journalism. For someone who has been proved to have aired doctored videos and fake news, Mr Goswami has no moral ground to stand on and comment on someone who has tirelessly tried to call for world peace and tranquillity.

Mr Goswami vented out his anger on Dr.Naik by making statements such as “he backs bin laden”, “He abuses all the non-Muslim religions”, “Suicide bombers are inspired by him”. Judging by the tone and demeanour of Goswami, it was quite apparent that he jumped to conclusions based on receiving news from uninformed sources and started a media trail on him. Goswami in his stint with Times Now has always focussed on sensationalizing issues which bear no relevance to the issues which a common man faces in this country. As someone had rightly pointed out that he and his channel are the daily soaps of the news world. We saw a classic example of his poor display of journalistic integrity when he deliberately chose to not ask any hard hitting questions to our respected Prime Minister in his recently conducted interview. If spreading the right message and questioning the religious bigots as claimed by Goswami was so important to him then one wonders why he hasn’t called the likes of Sadhvi Prachi who openly preach their destructive ideologies to the masses.

Now look at the other side of the story, these are the few statements taken from Dr. Naik’s lectures “Suicide bombing where innocent human beings are killed is totally prohibited in Islam”, “There is no compulsion in Islam”, “I’m proud to be an Indian. If required for the truth I’m ready to die for my country”, “You should not slander anyone even if he or she is non-Muslim”. With this one can easily figure out how he is being misquoted.

It is quite bewildering to see that, when the so called intellectuals like Tasleema Nasreen and Salman Rushdie abuse Islam and Muslims, it is not viewed as hate speech but when Dr. Naik talks about his understanding about Islam he is dubbed as hate preacher.

We live in a society where obnoxious excuse for human beings like Yogi Adatyanath  go scot free for calling to rape the corpse of dead Muslim women and the media still not questioning their motives while Islamic preachers will have to go through the litmus test of nationalism for propagating the peaceful message of Islam.

Reason fails to appeal me when Dr.Naik is blamed if a bomber from Dhaka attack happens to be his follower. The media failed to mention they(attackers) expend to watch BBC, CNN and also one of them was follower of Sraddha Kapoor a bollywood actress. Then why single out only Dr.Naik? Isn’t this a case of selective slandering?

It was rightly said by someone that  “blaming Dr.Zakir Naik for Dhaka attack is like blaming Einstein for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima Nagasaki for using his e=mc² equation to build an atomic bomb” .

On a geo-political level it must be observed that ISIS attacks have majorly been executed in Muslim dominated countries making Muslims the victims as much or rather more than the non-Muslims. It is thought provoking to comprehend the possibility of a Muslim inspiring thousands of other Muslims to kill each other in the name of religion.

Media is so busy in proving Dr.Naik as a terrorist, it has completely forgotten to cover other important issues related to barbarism happening in Kashmir and the recent scams. This could be one of their strategies to keep away people from real important issues.

It is high time that we speak out against the biases shown towards Dr.Naik as these attacks could be targeted against anyone in future just because they follow a particular religion. To conclude in the evergreen words of Pastor Martin Niemoller

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.