This article was just published in the quint.

ZAKIR NAIK – PREACHER OR PROVOCATEUR?

Murad Ali Baig

It is easy to blame anyone for inspiring terrorism but there is no evidence that Zakir Naik is guilty of doing anything but proclaiming words about Islamic law and traditions. A look at YouTube or other social media will show an ardent speaker in a prayer cap to proclaim his piety and a neat western suit and tie to declare his relevance to modern audiences. He attracts huge audiences not only on his own PeaceTV but at numerous public venues in Dubai, Dacca and in many Indian cities.

Many viewers may be offended by his remarks about women’s rights, Osama Bin Laden, Jews, etc., but it has to be said that Naik does not step outside the limits of Islamic traditions. If his comments are offensive it is because the Quran and many other sources of Islamic law, like all scriptures, were created in mediaeval times when values were very different to those of today. He greatly resembles a passionate criminal lawyer who will argue his brief and shows an impressive knowledge about Judaism, Christianity and even Hinduism.

His brief is however confined to Islamic writings and he does not admit what historians know today that the verses of Quran were only collected 33 years after the death of the prophet by Uthman the third Khalif. He, like most Muslims, also ardently believes that the events in the life of the prophet were well recorded when in fact the first biographer ibn Ishaq was born 72 years after Muhammad’s death. Al Tabari the second biographer was a Persian born another 53 years later. The second most important Islamic scripture is the Hadis (Hadith) that was composed by Al Bukhari and others still later. Islamic traditions can thus be proved to be the work of a number of mortal humans and not the immortal words of God as many want to believe.

Zakir Naik is not universally popular in Muslim circles but this is not surprising as there are approximately 72 Muslim sects and sub sects and his strongly Wahhabi orientation is especially offensive to the many million Shias, Sufi and Ahmediyas. The Wahhabi element is mainly responsible for the hate and violence that it often advocates. Abd Al Wahhab, born about 1703, popularized a very extreme Islamic philosophy that rejected not just idolatry but reverence to any mortal. The Wahhabis disallowed ceremonies for marriage or death, worship of saints, adorning of graves, tombs or other sacred objects, holding religious processions, art, music and dance and demanded the total suppression of women. They did not even spare the tomb of the prophet at Madina and stripped the Kaaba of all the treasures gifted by pilgrims to decorate it. 

Religious teachers including his own father and uncle were horrified at his excesses but he was fortunate to find a patron in Muhammad Al-Saud who used this vitriolic new creed as a powerful weapon to propel his tribe to win his descendents the kingdom of Arabia that they rule to this day. Then the discovery of oil in 1938 gave them the power to finance the spread of their fanatic creed to all Muslim countries. 

Though Naik appears knowledgeable about Judaism he does not explain how the Jewish Torah (Tawraat) became one of the sacred books of Islam roughly three hundred years after the prophet. Most of the horrible sins in the 613 (not 10) Commandments and the ghastly punishments in the book of Leviticus are not found in the Quran but are widely used by many Muslim clerics to make Islam so unpalatable in modern times.

If Islam was the religion of Muhammad how was it hijacked by revisionists?

As in all religions the traditions of Islam were changed frequently over the centuries by a number of passionate clerics who moved the Islamic Sharia from the mostly peaceable words of Muhammad to the angry rhetoric of the Taliban and IS. This continuous shift is clear from main milestones of the religion:

570 AD. Birth of the prophet Muhammad.

610. Muhammad receives the divine revelation from the angel Gabriel.

622. The Hijra. Muhammad migrates from Mecca to Medina to mark the beginning of the Muslim calendar.

632. Death of Muhammad.

661. Assassination of Ali that marks the beginning of Shia faction.

665. The third Khalif Uthman announces the definitive version of the Quran probably written by Zaid Ibn Thabit 33 years after Muhammad’s death.

704. Birth of Ibn Ishaq the first biographer about the life of Muhammad. There is no record of the prophet’s life till 82 years after the hijra. 142 years later Al Tabari elaborated on it.

Two hundred years after the death of Muhammad the second most sacred Islamic book, the Hadis (or Hadith) was compiled by a few pious scholars to guide Muslims to not only follow the words of the Prophet in the Quran but also examples from his life. Scholars like Al Bukhari tried to trace the descendents of the prophet’s family and reconstruct the stories of his life. Bukhari however rejected 99% of the stories that were offered to him. Restrictions on women like the veil only now become a requirement. The Prophet’s smallest actions become acts of piety for many Muslims. 

750 – 1258. Abbasid Caliphate. The Islamic empire containing many diverse races became a complex imperial society that needed new legal authorities like the Qazi (magistrate) concerned with legal matters, functions of the police, taxes and the status of non-Muslim subjects. Islamic law now split into six schools.

In the tenth century the Jewish Torah (Tawraat) was adopted and the Jewish sins of blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, etc., became Islamic sins. Muslim clerics only now began prescribing the Jewish death sentences by burning, stoning, beheading and strangulation even though the Quran had never prescribed such punishments.

Four categories of punishment in Islamic law were devised much after the Quran. These were Qisas - (retaliation as `an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth’ following the Jewish Torah); Diyya -compensation paid to the heirs of a victim in blood money or ransom; Hadud – harsh punishments for severe crimes like murder, adultery, blasphemy, intoxication, idolatry or apostasy and Tazir – punishments given at the discretion of a Qazi.

1256. After the bloody sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols, Ahmad ibn Tamiyya, a Muslim scholar, was driven out of Iraq and declared a new policy to divide the Islamic world. `Dar ul Islam’ (abode of Islam) and `Dar ul Harb’ (abode of disbelievers). He also redefined the word Jihad to mean a Holy War.

1683. The defeat of the Turkish armies outside Vienna marked the end of Islamic expansion and the beginning of European power that was to soon dominate the world and push Muslim countries into increasingly narrow minded orthodoxy.

In the nineteenth century Islam was hijacked by Mohammad Abd Al Wahhab who started the Sunni Wahhabiya movement. It accepted the Quran and Hadis but opposed all innovations, superstitions and deviances with a very narrow interpretation in a puritanical and legalistic form. They considered the veneration of pirs, the intercession of Imams, religious holidays, and other devotional acts as heresies and even desecrated the tomb of Muhammad. With the support of the ibn Saud family they promoted an extreme form of Islam that led to the Taliban, Al Qaida and IS.

1922. The Balfour declaration at the end of the First World War Britain callously divided the former Turkish territories. Israel became an independent country in 1948 and began a series of bitter wars with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria leading to an unending cycle of conflict ever since.

1991 and 2003. The American `War on Terror’ against Iraq and Afghanistan (2001) outraged many Muslims who considered them morally unjustified. The American CIA support for Saudi Arabia made them virtual allies in the creation of the radical Taliban. Later the Sunni ISIS attacked the Shia majorities in Syria and Iraq who were supported by a Shia Iran backed by Russia.

Like all religions Islam changed frequently over time. As many of the frequently irrational or violent laws of Judaism became sanctified in Islam Muslim clerics found them convenient to regiment their followers with increasingly onerous regulations enforced by draconian punishments.

People forget that the Quran explicitly says that killing in the name of Islam is the opposite of Jihad and had expressly forbidden an attack on anyone who had offered no offence and that it is forbidden to harm or to kill women and children. Many do not know that it is also forbidden to take hostages or to torture or kill prisoners. Even suicide is forbidden. The Prophet had said that anyone who sets another on fire, even an ant, commits the greatest sin and is destined to the fires of hell.

Times of India carried this article on the edit page on May 28.

Not Plassey 1757 but Samugarh 1658: Fateful tipping point

that fixed the subcontinent’s future course

Murad Ali Baig

On May 29 1658 India’s history changed forever. Aurangzeb’s victory over his brother Dara Shikoh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry in India that not only alienated Hindus but the much more moderate Sufis and Shias as well. His narrow Sunni beliefs were to make India the hotbed of Muslim fundamentalists long before the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia sponsored the fanatics of the Taliban and ISIL.

Samugarh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry that led over the centuries to the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan and backlash of radical Hinduism.

Two great Mughal armies led by Shah Jahan’s eldest son Dara Shikoh and his third son Aurangzeb clashed on a dusty plain about twenty kilometers south east of Agra. It was not only a battle for the Mughal throne but a battle for the very soul of India pitting Dara, an eclectic scholar who respected all religions, against Aurangzeb who was an orthodox Sunni Muslim. Dara had first translated of the Bhagavat Gita and the Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian to make them known to the public for the first time. The fact that he had been a Sanskrit scholar shows that there had been considerable Hindu – Muslim amity in the time of Shahjahan. But Dara had been a pampered prince who faced a smaller battle hardened army that Aurangzeb had marched up from the Deccan after defeating an Imperial army at Dharmat near Indore.

Blocked at the Chambal River Aurangzeb quietly slipped behind Dara’s lines to reach a secret ford across the Chambal by nonstop double marches over two days. Dara now realized that Aurangzeb’s armies had outflanked his army and come very close to Agra so he had to rush east without most of his cannons. The two armies met on a flat dusty plain east of a village called Samugarh on an unbelievably hot day with the sun was like a furnace in a cloudless sky. There was not enough water so many soldiers and horses collapsed of heat and sun stroke. The battle was more than just a contest between Dara and his rebel brothers but was beginning to become a religious war with the Hindus supporting Dara and many Muslim nobles supporting Aurangzeb.

Dara was on the brink of victory when he was betrayed. One of his commanders, Khalilullah Khan rushed up and insisted that he must dismount and finish the battle on a horse. He is reported to have cried out… ”Praise be to Allah this victory is your own! But my God! Why you are still mounted on a lofty elephant? Have you not been sufficiently exposed to danger? If one of the numberless musket balls or arrows touch your royal person who can imagine the terrible situation to which we will all be reduced? In God’s name descend quickly, mount this horse and pursue the miserable fugitives with all vigour.” But as soon as Dara descended, a huge shout was sent up by Khalilullah Khan’s squadron that Dara Shikoh had been killed. When the bewildered soldiers saw through the swirling clouds of dust and smoke that the howdah of Dara’s elephant was empty they feared the worst and fled towards Agra.

The noise of battle quite quickly subsided and the dust and smoke began to slowly clear to reveal some fifteen thousand corpses lying on the dusty battlefield in hundreds of piles coated in vivid crimson blood. The Rajput corpses in their yellow jamas looked like untidy fields of saffron but all the fallen bodies were quickly shrouded by a huge cloak of choking yellow dust. Dara rode back to his mansion from where left for Delhi. He then retreated to Lahore and then down the Indus and a year later was able to muster a big army to fight a fierce three day battle against Aurangzeb at Deorai south of Ajmer. He then fled towards Kandahar to be betrayed once again and brought to Delhi where the imperial Qazis sentenced him to death for the crime of heresy. He had written a book called the `Mingling of the Oceans’ showing the many similarities between the Quran and the Brahma Shastras of the Hindus. 

At the trial the first Qazi asked Dara to hand him the jade thumb ring that was still on his left hand. He is reported to have turned it over and asked why the green stone was inscribed with the words ‘Allah’ on one side and ‘Prabhu’ on the other. Dara evidently replied that the creator was known by many name and called God, Allah, Prabhu, Jehova, Ahura Mazda and many more names by devout people in many different lands. He added that it is written in the Quran that Allah had sent down one hundred and twenty four thousand messengers to show all the people of the world the way of righteousness and he believed that these messengers had been sent not only to Muslims but to all the people of the world in every age. He said that this belief had inspired him to write the `Mingling of the Oceans’ showing the similarities between the Quran and the Hindu Brahma Shastras. Aurangzeb casually signed the order of execution after the Qazis found him guilty of heresy.

Aurangzeb’s greatest weakness was his inflexible religious bigotry that made him lose the support his influential Shia subjects as well as his many Hindu and Rajputs followers. His intolerance became more acute after twenty years of rule as he became frustrated by endless rebellions. By persecuting his own Rajput followers he cut off his own arms and weakened his military power. The Maratha leader Shivaji initially had no anti Muslim sentiment and had been quite willing to become a Mughal Amir. Aurangzeb’s obstinate pride however alienated him and gave him a weapon to turn a purely political war against the Mughals into a religious war.

If Dara had won at Samugarh his rule might have promoted harmony between India’s turbulent peoples and a united Mughal empire may have prevented India becoming so easily colonized by European powers. Samugarh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry that led over the centuries to the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan and the backlash of radical Hinduism. Samugarh was a tipping point in India’s history.