Britain's May ban radical preacher Zakir Naik

http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2010/06/britains-may-ban-radical-preacher-zakir.html

My original comments along with Tarek and Javed’s comments and the original article are included below:

Khalid Faridi, Thanks for sharing your opinion on the subject and I am responding to your comment that follows my comments.

Your statement,“ After all, who is more evildoer than the UK and US governments ever since.”

Perhaps your frustration is legitimate that UK and US have not banned insane men preaching hate in the name of Christianity or Judaism and why pick Islam.

Nations are not the evil doers, nor are religions, it always stems from an individual and it is shame that democracies allow that. There should not be any curb on freedom of speech, however if a speech incites people, disturbs the peace of the nation, it amounts to emotional terrorizing and must be punished or banned.

“Those who abhor him do so out of jealousy.” Khalid, please substantiate that.

“But when self proclaimed moderates jump on he bandwagon it is sad.” Again Khalid, perhaps you did not get a chance to read my comments, Here are a few from my earlier postings;

“If in fact Dr. Naik has said this non-sense” and, “I will apologize profusely, if Dr. Naik has not said that.”

“Why Tarek or Mike don't question these media”

We do that all the times, in another incident, I have said to Pam Geller on ABC radio, “that she has cooked this up” “We need to tell the truth to the American and not your BS versions”… and a whole lot more. There are over 28,000 comments on it, most of them are fine, but there are several hate mongers on it.

There are worse hate mongers that Naik out there (if he has said that).

“Tarek what do we need to do with the # 1 hate mongers in the world, these guys are actually dangerous. John Hagee, Billy Graham Jr, Pat Robertson, Alan Dershowitz and several more, they are in every religion, we can take care of ourselves, but what about these enemies of humanity?”

I have a whole blog http://hatesermons.blogspot.com/
on hate sermons where I have condemned the idiots who represent Judaism and Christianity, here are a few titles:

HAGEES HATE SERMONS ON PBS
Hate talks coming out of synagogues
The real Pat Robertson
Free to criticize religions but not with hate
Praying for Obama's death
Neocons of the World
Nonie Darwish; a hate monger
Arlington Library bans hate group
Muslims in America not for domination
Muslim Response to Lies about Qur'aan
Jewish-Muslim dialogue, a necessity
John Hagee's hate pit
Rod Parsley a McCain Ally
Hate Sermons from Pulpit

Let Tarek speak for himself, on my part, any one who does incites hate or speaks from the pulpit, be it in the name of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism or other religions, I will speak out against it… and the right wingers among them will continue to target me. Thanks Allah for giving me the freedom to endure the nasty ugly attacks on me. I spare no one.

As far as Zakir Naik goes, it is important that we are critical of our own, that gives us credibility to be critical of others. Aren't the Jewish people accused of not being critical of their own radicals?

If you wish to comment, please do so after reading other comments at: http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2010/06/britains-may-ban-radical-preacher-zakir.html#comments

Mike Ghouse
To be a Muslim is to be a peace maker
one who mitigates conflicts and nurtures goodwill.
-------------------------------------------------

Salam,

It is not him but the fact that truth hurts and it hurts the evildoers more. After all, who is more evildoer than the UK and US governemtns ever since.

Most muslims who adore zakir do so because he stands like a beacon among apologists.

Those who abhor him do so out of jealousy. He is not an internet scholar, nor a paper's. He is alive, kicking and is doing what he can, best.

It is a tragedy that muslims scholars, internet or otherwise, seldom give due recognition to scholars who are doing what they ought to do as long as they are alive. Ironical but true.

People like Tarek quote media as gospel truth. there isn't any point arguing with them. But when self proclaimed moderates jump on he bandwagon it is sad.

Why should a muslim believe what CNN, BBC or Daniel say? Why Tarek or Mike don't question these media and instead point there guns to everyone whop doesn't agree with them?

Wassalaam
Khalid Faridi
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AA,

Javed,

I am glad you wrote this, it has room for more accomodation, "It will be better
if Muslims stop the practice of condemning Jews as a whole and instead run their
campaign against Zionism. Strategically too it is important, as it will weaken
the support of Zionists among Jews."

Here is my commentary on the topic:

Zionism in its simplest form is the desire of the Jews in diaspora to live in
their home land, indeed, that is the desire of most people; to be at home where
they feel secure. Zionism encapsulates the dream of the Jewish people to have a
homeland; it is an idea of life for the people. The Word Zionism conjures up
different images to different people, we have to accept that bad elements are in
every group, whether Zionism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism or others, we cannot
brand the whole group for the acts of few, this amounts to stereotyping and it
is wholesale prejudice.

Islamist is a bad word to lump all Muslims, or Hindutva is a bad word to lump
all Hindus, we cannot lump all Zionists as a bad people for the acts of a few.
As a Muslim and as a Pluralist, I will do my part to keep people from
stereotyping others, however, we all (people of all faiths) need to join and do
a combined education. No Muslim should smile when some one is bashing Judaism,
no Jew should gloat if some one is bashing Muslims, or Hinduism or Christianity,
that is downright stupid and not religious at all.

The word Zionism word will be used to describe the dreams of Jewish people and
to describe the extremists among them, we have the right word; Neocon Jews.

Zionist no more; they will be called Neocon- Jews or Neocon-Zionists

What Mr. Katz said may be irrelevant, as the word Yahud has been in use at least
from the times of Islam and that was 6th century.

Zionism is not going to go away, the Neocon-Jews are screwing up things and that
increases anti-semitism, and the makes them dig in their heels.

We have to find solutions for co-existence. The old methods of you or me, does
not work, it has to be us.

Mike Ghouse

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Mike

AA

I do not want to comment on what Dr Zakir Naik has in fact said because he is often quoted out of context. I do disagree with him on some issues, but I think he is generally advocating Islam as a religion of Peace (Islamic meaning of peace and not the distorted meaning held by the forces of globalization.) and is in normally giving emphasis on similarity between Islam and other religions. What he said regarding the concept of feminism in West is largely true. However, I will like to make a few comments regarding the position of Jews in Qur’an and in the minds of Muslims. Owing mainly to Israel’s tyrannical attitude towards Palestinians, Muslims have developed hatred for “Jews” and it is this hatred that has led many Muslim writers and thinkers to single out Jews for all that is bad in the current world. I have disagreement on this for various reasons:

First, I believe that it is not “Jews” or “Christians” but the forces of economics of the current world (whose majority happens to belong to the two communities) that are mainly responsible for the evils of the world, but this has nothing to do with their religions. They are in fact economic fundamentalists who have done everything to minimize the influence of religion;

Secondly, if the kings and rulers are determined on the basis of the community they belong to, “Christians” are certainly the bigger culprits than Jews. British, French and other Imperialists were all Christians. But I will stress again that they were Christians by birth only and their actions had little to do with their religious beliefs though Christian missionaries indirectly benefited from them.

Third, the main reason behind the position taken by Islamic experts is that they have failed to understand the difference that Qur’an makes between “Yahud” (Jews) and “Children of Israel”. If we closely scrutinize the two in Qur’an, it is not difficult to understand that Qur’an describes the religious community (as a whole) that we know as “Jews” today as “Children of Israel” and praises as well as criticizes them for what they have done in the past. But Qur’an exhorts Muslims to develop social contacts with them. “Yahud” in Quran refers to a segment of “banu Israel” that has adopted extremist, treacherous and violent ways against Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon both). So, generalized condemnation of “Jews” in Qur’an does not relate to Jew community of today.

It is interesting to quote here from an article by Joseph Katz:

“The term "Israel" or "Children of Israel" refers to the twelve sons of Jacob and their descendants. Jews almost never referred to themselves collectively as "Jews" until after the 13th century. In the Bible, Prayer Book and Talmud they call themselves "Children of Israel", "Children of Jacob", "Israel", etc. but never "Jews". The word "Jews" derives from the Roman term "Judea" which described roughly the area allocated to the tribe of Judah including Jerusalem. More specifically it refers to the militant zealots who fought against Rome. According to Josephus, these zealots belonged to a Temple Cult at odds with the Rabbinical Jewish authorities, and a portion of which were Idumean converts to Judaism. In this sense the "Jews" or more properly "Judeans" meant militants. New Testament references to "Jews" follow this pattern, for example Jesus was labeled as "King of the Jews", i.e. "King of the militants", not "King of Israel". After the Islamic conquest "Children of Israel" came to imply the Jewish people who kept the Divinely given commandments, and the "Jews" as those who abandoned or rejected them. Borrowing from European anti-Semitic literature, modern Islamists have stressed only the latter stereotype of evil "Jews".”

It will be better if Muslims stop the practice of condemning Jews as a whole and instead run their campaign against Zionism. Strategically too it is important, as it will weaken the support of Zionists among Jews.

Dr Javed Jamil
--------------------------------------------------------

Tarek,

Thanks for sharing this critical information, I have been swamped with things to do, but this one got me going. We have to find the truth, that is our responsibility.

1) If in fact Dr. Naik has said this non-sense, we condemn it without reservation. “There are many Jews who are good to Muslims, but as a whole … The Koran tells us, as a whole, they will be our staunchest enemy.”

He has a right to free speech, but not malign Islam with non-sense like that. Where the heck did he get his Islam from? Does the man understand Islam means peace? Does he understand that God is not prejudiced? Who wants a God that hates his own creation, he is making God to be a bad guy and not Rahman and Raheem that is on top of every thing we do, he does not get Islam right. The overwhelming majority of Muslims show respect all religions as the Prophet did, but I know I will be rebuked by a few right winger Muslims, so be it, I will not let any idiot make my faith, and the universal God to be reduced to a God who tells bad things about his own creation? That is not Islam he is preaching.

I will apologize profusely, if Dr. Naik has not said that. I know a few Muslims wrongfully believe in that non-sense; because some of the Muslim scholars in the past have interpreted Quraan in that way, thank God Quraan is beautiful and needs to be understood from the very first line of Quraan.

His statement about terrorist is goofy, but harmless if you understand what he was trying to say.

Tarek what do we need to do with the # 1 hate mongers in the world, these guys are actually dangerous. John Hagee, Billy Graham Jr, Pat Robertson, Alan Dershowitz and several more, they are in every religion, we can take care of ourselves, but what about these enemies of humanity?.

Mike Ghouse
World Muslim Congress
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In a message dated 6/18/2010 8:02:56 A.M. Central Daylight Time, tarekfatah@rogers.com writes:


Friends,

Zakir Naik is an Indian Islamist firebrand who has preached hatred towards non-Muslims and who is on record of saying, "Every Muslim should be a terrorist." This jihadi televangelist was to speak in Britain to tens of thousands of radical Islamists, but he has now been banned from entering the UK.

With a trip to London now out of question, what does good old Zakir Naik do? He gets invited to a Toronto Islamic Conference where is touted to be the "featured speaker" on July 2, 2010, at Toronto's Metro Convention Centre. Here is the link:http://journeyconference.com/

Who says we Canadians are not suckers for punishment. Will we welcome this hate-monger or will our government do the right thing and tell this ugly preacher to take his hate somewhere else? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, read and reflect.

Tarek
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June 18, 2010
Britain's Home secretary Theresa May bans radical preacher Zakir Naik from entering UK

Radical preacher claimed “every Muslim should be a terrorist”

By Christopher Hope
The Telegraph, UK

In her first major test of being tough on extremism, Theresa May, the new Home Secretary, said she was banning Zakir Naik from entering the UK. Dr Naik, a 44-year-old Indian televangelist, had been due to give a series of lectures at arenas in Wembley Arena and Sheffield.

The Home Secretary can exclude or deport an individual if she thinks that their presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good.

There had been speculation that Dr Naik would be allowed into the UK. However Mrs May said she was excluding him because of the “numerous comments” he made were evidence of his “unacceptable behaviour”.

This behaviour applies to anyone who writes or publishes material which can “foment justify or glorify terrorist violence” or “seek to provoke others to terrorist acts”.

Mrs May told The Daily Telegraph: “I have excluded Dr Naik from the UK. Numerous comments made by Dr Naik are evidence to me of his unacceptable behaviour.

“Coming to the UK is a privilege not a right and I am not wiling to allow those who might not be conducive to the public good to enter the UK. Exclusion powers are very serious and no decision is taken lightly or as a method of stopping open debate on issues.”

Home Office sources said Dr Naik had been filmed on a website making inflammatory comments such as “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

He said: “When a robber sees a policeman he’s terrified. So for a robber, a policeman is a terrorist. So in this context, every Muslim should be a terrorist to the robber.”

He has also been filmed saying: “There are many Jews who are good to Muslims, but as a whole … The Koran tells us, as a whole, they will be our staunchest enemy.”

In a web posting from 2006 he said: “Beware of Muslims saying Osama Bin Laden is right or wrong. I reject them … we don’t know.

“But if you ask my view, if given the truth, if he is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him. I don’t know what he’s doing. I’m not in touch with him. I don’t know him personally. I read the newspaper. “If he is terrorising the terrorists, if he is terrorising America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, every Muslim should be a terrorist.”

He is also reported to have said suggested that western women make themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing.

He reportedly said: “Western society has actually degraded [women] to the status of concubines, mistresses and social butterflies, who are mere tools in the hands of pleasure seekers and sex marketeers”

Last night Patrick Mercer MP, the former chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism committee, said: “This is really good news. It shows that firm Government action can be taken against people. "This is exactly the sort of man who we want to exclude from this country.”

Dr Naik has been named as the third most popular spiritual guru in India and was judged in 2009 to be 82nd in a list of India’s most powerful people.=

Added later:

The Trouble with Dr. Zakir Naik – Britain’s decision to bar an influential Muslim cleric from entering the country underscores the failure of Indian secularism. OPINION INDIAJUNE 20, 2010

By SADANAND DHUME

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704365204575317833268479268.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hps_sections_opinion

If you’re looking for a snapshot of India’s hapless response to radical Islam, then look no further than Bombay-based cleric Dr. Zakir Naik. In India, the 44-year-old Dr. Naik—a medical doctor by training and a televangelist by vocation—is a widely respected figure, feted by newspapers and gushed over by television anchors. The British, however, want no part of him. On Friday, the newly elected Conservative-led government announced that it would not allow Dr. Naik to enter Britain to deliver a series of lectures. According to Home Secretary Theresa May, the televangelist has made “numerous comments” that are evidence of his “unacceptable behavior.”

The good doctor’s views run the gamut from nutty to vile, so it’s hard to pinpoint which of them has landed him in trouble. For instance, though Dr. Naik has condemned terrorism, at times he also appears to condone it. “If he [Osama bin Laden] is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him,” he said in a widely watched 2007 YouTube diatribe. “If he is terrorizing the terrorists, if he is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist.”

Dr. Naik recommends the death penalty for homosexuals and for apostasy from the faith, which he likens to wartime treason. He calls for India to be ruled by the medieval tenets of Shariah law. He supports a ban on the construction of non-Muslim places of worship in Muslim lands and the Taliban’s bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas. He says revealing clothes make Western women “more susceptible to rape.” Not surprisingly, Dr. Naik believes that Jews “control America” and are the “strongest in enmity to Muslims.”


Of course, every faith has its share of cranks; and, arguably, India has more than its share. But it’s impossible to relegate Dr. Naik to Indian Islam’s fringe. Earlier this year, the Indian Express listed him as the country’s 89th most powerful person, ahead of Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen, eminent lawyer and former attorney general Soli Sorabjee, and former Indian Premier League cricket commissioner Lalit Modi. Dr. Naik’s satellite TV channel, Peace TV, claims a global viewership of up to 50 million people in 125 countries. On YouTube, a search for Dr. Naik turns up more than 36,000 hits.

Nobody accuses Dr. Naik of direct involvement in terrorism, but those reportedly drawn to his message include Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan-American arrested last year for planning suicide attacks on the New York subway; Rahil Sheikh, accused of involvement in a series of train bombings in Bombay in 2006; and Kafeel Ahmed, the Bangalore man fatally injured in a failed suicide attack on Glasgow airport in 2007.

Nonetheless, when the doctor appears on a mainstream Indian news channel, his interviewers tend to be deferential. Senior journalist and presenter Shekhar Gupta breathlessly introduced his guest last year as a “rock star of televangelism” who teaches “modern Islam” and “his own interpretation of all the faiths around the world.” A handful of journalists—among them Praveen Swami of the Hindu, and the grand old man of Indian letters, Khushwant Singh—have questioned Dr. Naik’s views, but most take his carefully crafted image of moderation at face value.

At first glance, it’s easy to understand why. Unlike the foaming mullah of caricature, Dr. Naik eschews traditional clothing for a suit and tie. His background as a doctor and his often gentle demeanor set him apart, as does his preaching in English. Unlike traditional clerics, Dr. Naik quotes freely from non-Muslim scripture, including the Bible and the Vedas. (You have to pay attention to realize that invariably this is either to disparage other faiths, or to interpret them in line with his version of Islam.) The depth of Dr. Naik’s learning is easily apparent.

But this doesn’t fully explain Dr. Naik’s escape from criticism. It helps that Indians appear to have trouble distinguishing between free speech and hate speech. In a Western democracy, demanding the murder of homosexuals and the second-class treatment of non-Muslims would likely attract public censure or a law suit. In India, it goes unchallenged as long as it has a religious imprimatur. However, create a book or a painting that ruffles religious sentiment, as the writer Taslima Nasreen and the painter M. F. Husain both discovered, and either the government or a mob of pious vigilantes will strive to muzzle you.

In general, India accords extra deference to allegedly holy men of all stripes unlike, say, France, which strives to keep religion out of the public square. Taxpayers subsidize the Haj pilgrimage for pious Muslims and a similar, albeit much less expensive, journey for Hindus to a sacred lake in Tibet. This reflexive deference effectively grants the likes of Dr. Naik—along with all manner of Hindu and Christian charlatans—protection against the kind of robust scrutiny he would face in most other democracies.

Finally, unlike Hindu bigots, such as the World Hindu Council’s Praveen Togadia, whose fiercest critics tend to be fellow Hindus, radical Muslims go largely unchallenged. The vast majority of Indian Muslims remain moderate, but their leaders are often fundamentalists and the community has done a poor job of policing its own ranks. Moreover, most of India’s purportedly secular intelligentsia remains loath to criticize Islam, even in its most radical form, lest this be interpreted as sympathy for Hindu nationalism.

Unless this changes, unless Indians find the ability to criticize a radical Islamic preacher such as Dr. Naik as robustly as they would his Hindu equivalent, the idea of Indian secularism will remain deeply flawed.

Mr. Dhume, a columnist for WSJ.com, is writing a book on the new Indian middle class.