Search for Zakir Naik on You Tube and you will get his 1500 odd sermons broadcast on his Peace TV and funded by his Islamic Research Foundation. His raison d'être is to show how Islam is the only true faith, Mohammed the last prophet and Jesus a messenger (but not God) before him, with an aim to quickly convert his questioners.
He is a Indian licensed medical doctor who has an incredible memory which he uses to quote suras, hadiths, their numbers in the Quran and chapter and verse in the Old and New Testaments, not forgetting Hindu and Buddhist texts. Of course he is limited in the certain fixed ones he repeats all the time but it is a feat all the same. I have gone through at least 200 of his sermons and have observed as follows: 1. He parrots the same fallacious arguments without directly answering his questioners. 2. He quotes the Bible and the Vedas in a seemingly erudite manner but the quotes are often irrelevant, out of context or do not support his argument. He depends on you to blindly accept what he says and rarely allows rebuttal. If you try to introduce an argument, he tells you to organize your own sermons and not waste previous time on his. 3. All his questioners are youngish, not well read or knowledgeable and cannot make cogent arguments. I suspect they are chosen on those grounds. The questioners are non-Muslims but the audience in the thousands are all Muslims. 4. He had a rare opportunity of impressing a sophisticated audience at the Oxford Society but here he was out of his depth, making questioners shake their heads incredulously. I hold no brief for him but the truth is he has not encouraged terrorists or terrorism. Compared to what militant imams and mullahs publicly pronounce in western countries, this man is a Labrador pup. But lately, authorities in India are waiting to question him when he returns from Saudi Arabia. Now, notice Indian double standards. Because the Muslim population in India is militant and vociferous, the authorities will look to vilify him for terrorism charges (of which he he largely innocent) rather than conversion (of which he is entirely guilty). On the other hand with the Christians in India, the govt takes an anti-conversion stand, knowing the community is law abiding. But it's hard to make a case for free speech when Christian groups like the Bombay Catholic Sabha take to demonstrations to stop anything that is critical of their faith. The protest against showing the Da Vinci Code in cinemas some years ago for example shows the basic insecurity of the Christians in India in their faith. I was looking to read Robin Viegas' link in his recent post about Zakir Naik but it was a garbled link. Roland Francis Toronto.
