Islamist Terror in India: Is This Man Being Investigated?

I wouldn’t have given a damn about Zakir Naik pictured above if it were not for his name crop up in newspaper reports on the investigations into the 7/11 Mumbai blasts. This is what appeared in one of Praveen Swami’s articles on 7/11 blasts:

….Sheikh, for example, recruited Ghaswala during an April 2003 convention organised by the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, a religious sect from which the Lashkar draws much of its cadre. Zakir Naik, a well-known Mumbai-based television evangelist, was the star speaker at the convention. Although there is no suggestion that Naik's Islamic Research Foundation itself played any role in the bombings, Sheikh and other Mumbai Lashkar operatives are known to have often visited the religious centre — which also, significantly, features as an approved source of religious-ideological information on the Lashkar's website. [The Hindu]

Another report in the “Indian Express” had this:

‘‘Deshmukh used to work at the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) in Dongri,’’ said Additional Commissioner of Police, Anti-Terrorist Squad, Jaijeet Singh. But the public relations manager of IRF said: ‘‘Feroz Deshmukh is not an IRF employee. He works at an Islamic bookshop, owned by a relative of our chairman Zakir Naik, next to the IRF building. Deshmukh visited the IRF regularly to use the toilet and look up Urdu books.’’ ‘‘Raheel and Deshmukh met often at the IRF library. They also met at meetings held by the research foundation and chatted on the internet. The last time the two met was about six months ago. [Indian Express]

The common name in these two reports is Zakir Naik. For some reason this name sounded familiar to me and I remembered that I heard him preach on Islam on QTV. Zakir Naik is an Indian Islamic evangelist from Mumbai. According to reports available on the net he is a very famous preacher with wide following among South Asian Muslims. Once when tuning the channels on my TV, I saw him on Q TV preaching in English and I watched it for sometime. He was speaking at a gathering of South Asian Muslims where he was asked all type of questions including the controversial ones on Islam and its tenets and his answers only amused me. Check out his controversial views on at Wikipedia. When I saw him for the first time I didn’t have any idea that he was one of us. In fact I thought he was Pakistani.

After some googling I found some damning stuff on him. The following are some of the controversial statements he made or attributed to him. Justifying terrorism:

They call all Muslims terrorists, but just a policeman strikes terror into the heart of a criminal, all Muslims are required to strike terror into the heart of robbers, thieves, rapists, the unjust, the anti-social elements.[mezba]

Another of his quote on terrorism:

Every Muslim should be a terrorist. A terrorist is a person who causes terror. The moment a robber sees a policeman he is terrified. A policeman is a terrorist for the robber. Similarly every Muslim should be a terrorist for the antisocial elements of society, such as thieves, dacoits and rapists. Whenever such an anti-social element sees a Muslim, he should be terrified. It is true that the word ‘terrorist’ is generally used for a person who causes terror among the common people. But a true Muslim should only be a terrorist to selective people i.e. anti-social elements, and not to the common innocent people. In fact a Muslim should be a source of peace for innocent people.”

The following is how Ali Sina who is a fierce critic of Dr. Naik interpreted Dr. Naik’s above views on terrorism:

It would be naive to take Dr. Naik's justification of terrorism by its face value. What this snake-oil salesman actually means by anti-social elements are the non-Muslims and those who resist conversion. According to him I would be an anti-social element that have to be killed. Have I committed rape, theft or any crime? I and people like me are considered anti social because we speak our minds and Muslims can't handle that. Are Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin anti-social elements? What about Theo Van Gogh? Was he an anti social element? After glorifying and justifying terrorism and hyping his students to become terrorists, making them believe this is a divine mandate and a wonderful thing to do, Dr. Naik will then explain to his foolhardy alumni that "shirk is worse than killing" and the unbelievers are worse than thieves, dacoits, rapists and murderers. Therefore it is incumbent upon Muslims, to instill terror in the hearts of non-Muslims and kill them wherever they find them. To determine their innocence or guilt it is enough to ask them whether they want to convert to Islam or not. Ironically, since according to the Quran, these non-Muslims by rejecting Islam have committed the worst crime imaginable, their property can be stolen and their wives and daughters can be raped. Thus Muslims, who joined Dr. Naik’s school to fight the dacoits, BECOME the dacoits, the criminals and the thugs.

If the above are Naik’s views on terrorism and its interpretation by Ali Sina, then Zakir Naik is also is against killing innocent people in the name of Islam. This is what he said at a rightwing Islamic convention held recently in UK where some speakers justified jihad and suicide bombing:

However, Dr Zakir Naik described by organisers as "the most sought after Muslim public speaker in the world", criticised the actions of the New York, London and Bombay bombers. "How can you ever justify killing innocent people?" he said. "But in the same breath as condemning those responsible we must also condemn those responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon."[Manchester Evening News]

Here he is against killing innocents in the name of Islam but he is also reported to have advocated killing Muslims who leave their faith. He wants all Indians to adopt Shariah, as according to him it is the “most practical criminal law”. He advocates polygamy, interest-free Islamic banking, wearing of Hijab (burkha), etc.

The terrorists caught by the UK police in connection with the recently foiled UK terror plot from Heathrow airport have some established link with Tablighi Jamaat. Tablighi Jamaat is believed to control several mosques in Britain. Tablighi Jamaat, formed in 1927 in India, was a traditional Islamic movement. Nizamuddin (Delhi) was its headquarter. Zakir Naik is known to preach at such organisations but I couldn’t find anything that linked him to this one.

Now the question is whether Zakir Naik is being investigated by India’s security agencies for possible terror links or not. His controversial teachings, his religious center’s name featuring as an approved source of religious-ideological information on the Lashkar's website, the 7/11 perpetrators’ links to his Islamic center, etc should be more than enough reasons to investigate this Islamic evangelist’s links to Islamist terror network in India. Will the government wake up?