Not Just Zakir Naik: Secular Muslims Must Take The Fight Right To Saudi Arabia

The news nugget, that Islamist preacher Zakir Naik was one of the inspirations behind the Dhaka terrorists who killed 20 last week, provides a very strong reason for Muslims in India (and elsewhere) to abandon denial. They should start taking a clear stand against terror motivated by their religion. Denying a link between the two is no longer an option.

There have been calls to ban Naik, but banning is never a solution. In fact, it would make him a hero to other Muslims, something that is worse than just letting him talk. What Muslims need to do is take him on, not on behalf of Islam, but on behalf of the very secularism that India provides Muslims. What should worry Indian Muslims is that a rogue preacher can motivate so much mayhem without actually exhorting people to do so. You don’t need a Caliph called Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi to get people killed by the scores.

Thus far, Muslims have sought refuge under the following excuses:

One,that terrorists are not Muslims. This is, of course, a copout, not an argument. When the entire justification for terror is drawn from the Koran and its specific exhortations to fight infidels, to say terrorists are not Muslim is a lie.

Two, that the Koran does not justify terrorism. This again is an excuse to not see the truth. Not just the Koran, almost every religious scripture tends to have violent passages and benign ones. If we accept the benign passages as true, the rest should also be seen as valid. Since Muslims say the whole of the Koran is sacred and the final word of god, there is no justification for thinking only the terrorists have the wrong interpretation of the book.

The real truth is that no holy book can be read without some amount of common sense, a modern sensibility, and the historical context in which it was written. This is the only way to accept the holiness of a scripture and still not accept its worst features. So when Bangladesh’s I&B Minister Hassanul Hak Inu says even clerics dispute Naik’s interpretation of the Koran, it is yet another escape clause from confronting the problem.

Three,that social injustices in the societies in which Muslims live drive some towards terrorism. This holds a ring of truth, but the stuff in the middle is a bunch of lies. If terrorism is specific to cases of injustice, they the whole world should be immersed in terrorism. India, one of the poorest countries in the world, should be at war with itself always. We don’t lack any kind of injustice, even while we try and deal with them. But the Dhaka terrorists came from privileged backgrounds.

Even assuming they were middle class ideologues like the Maoists who dream of class war, the random killing of people can have no justification in any society. The root cause theory is invalid as a justification for terror; for root causes too can have other root causes.

Four, that suave and modern-looking Islamists like Zakir Naik who talk in English are less dangerous than those wild-eyed AK-47 wielding jihadis of Islamic State. In fact, no terror is possible without ideologues providing them a reason for it. And modern-looking and soft-talking preachers who use sophisticated arguments to convince ordinary Muslims that they are true scholars can be the most dangerous of them all. A violent jihadi is easy to identify and neutralise. A so-called scholar appearing on a so-called Peace TV is far tougher to label and isolate. (Read Aravindan Neelakandan on Zakir Naik and his sophisticated approaches here).

Five, that opposing Naik for religious reasons is not good enough. You have to oppose them for the right reasons. Some Muslim organisations argue that Naik praised Yazid, who was responsible for the massacre of the Prophet’s grandson and his followers in Karbala, and hence not kosher. In other words, some Shias may not like him, while Wahhabis and Sunnis may not have an issue with him. But would Naik be fine as long as he does not offend believers in the martyrdom at Karbala? If he subtly campaigns against other religions and turns ordinary Muslims against them, then too he is not fine. It is often said, possibly unthinkingly, that many Muslims have also been killed by terrorists, and hence the terrorists are not Muslims. But would Muslims be Muslims if they just killed people from other religions? Isn’t this fundamentally wrong?

Naik’s supporters argue that he never advocated terrorism, and that his infamous quote – that all Muslims should be terrorists if they are being terrorised – shows how Muslims can be easily misled. He said if Osama bin Laden is fighting the “enemies of Islam, I am for it”. If he is “terrorising the terrorists, and America is the biggest terrorist, I am with him.” It is in this context that he said that all Muslims should be terrorists.

This is a classic argument for justifying violence by saying that it is being used to fight injustice, or an enemy, or someone who is anti-Islam. Nobody will argue that if you are attacked you must not retaliate. So if jihad is justified as a response rather than as the provocation, everything can be justified. No Muslim asks him how he decided America was a terrorist, or that it was against Islam.

By this logic, non-Muslims should attack all Islamic regimes, since they suppress other religions. Outside India, and possibly Indonesia and Turkey, there is no Islamist regime that offers freedom of faith. And even Turkey and Indonesia are turning marginally Islamist. Muslims should call out Naik for his flawed arguments.

The only way forward for Muslims who live in secular regimes like India or the US or Europe is to take a maximalist and clear position against Islamist terror. This means nailing Islamism as a key ideological ingredient in terror. It means not using Koranic verses to oppose someone else using the same book to argue for jihad.

Above all, it means accepting secularism as the norm not only in the countries that practise it, but even in Islamic countries.

Muslims must unambiguously state that even Saudi Arabia has no business making itself Islamist. It must allow other religions to enter Saudi Arabia.

How can secularism be good only for this place called India, but not for places called Saudi Arabia, Iran, Arabia or Pakistan or even the Maldives? Muslims have no moral authority to talk of secularism only in the places where they are in a minority. (Hear how Naik defends the ban on non-Muslims in Mecca and Medina. His answer: these are the “cantonments” of Islam, and hence entry is barred.)

This is where Muslims should start the argument with Zakir Naik. They must take the battle for secularism to Saudi Arabia, guardian of their holiest places, and fountainhead of Wahhabi and intolerant Islam.