'India is far more secular'

Televangelist Dr Zakir Naik, who has been barred entry by the UK and now Canada for being 'dangerous', says the West is suffering from Islam-o-phobia

B Mahesh & Ashutosh Shukla - DNA India

Dr Zakir Naik, 45, does not give you much of a choice. "If you have sinned, all a court can pronounce is death or life sentence. The next life is eternal and there you will be roasted alive on a slow burner, then given fresh skin, and the action will be repeated a million times," he says, with the air of surety with which he answers all doubts in his sermons.

Coming from a man who wants to be seen as a promoter of peace, the graphic description of the afterlife can give you the shivers in this life, even when the person he mentions to illustrate his point is Hitler.

And since he says his message has always been of peace, he just cannot fathom why the British, and later the Canadian government, denied him entry into their countries. "It is politics, and there can be no other reason. The new Conservative government that has come to power in the UK was forced to issue the exclusion order debarring me because as an Opposition party it kept opposing the then government for being too liberal."

At the tiny office of Islamic Research Foundation on VP Road, Dongri, Naik says the UK media is "falsely" portraying him as a "preacher of hate, and a terror-backer". He says that his quote — 'All Muslims should be terrorists' — has been taken out of context. He quotes the Koran in defence, "If anyone killed a person, unless it be for murdering or for spreading corruption, it would be as if he has killed the whole humanity." He then argues, "Terrorists are those killing innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, can you dispute this context?"

His alleged anti-women stance, too, has contributed, he says. "I have been quoted as saying you can beat women. What the Koran says is that if you want to reprimand a woman, hit her with a feather. In today's context, you can replace the term with a handkerchief. Is that beating? Anything more than that is not acceptable." Does a woman have the same option? "No, if not for anything else, it can lead to retaliation," he says. One is unclear if the means of retaliation could be weightier than a kerchief. 

Dr Naik is challenging the exclusion order in the higher courts in the UK. "I have faith in the judiciaries of both the UK and India. The 1993 Mumbai blasts, the accused were rightly sentenced. They went through the judicial process and faced the consequences. I condemn all acts of terrorism," Naik says.

"These western countries talk a lot, but India is more secular and more democratic than any of them. Our constitution must be the only one in the world which gives freedom of speech and also the freedom to practice and propagate religion," Naik says, praising India for issuing special visas for public speakers and preachers. 

His formula for communal harmony: Go back to the Vedas, Upanishads, the Bible and the Koran; read your scriptures and you will find God. He also seeks a return of Sanskrit. "The government should make it popular and common, so that people can go back to reading the scriptures. I say, follow strictly whatever religion you practice," he advises. "Go to the authentic sources, not the scholars."

He effortlessly quotes from the Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Vedas, and the Bible. "It is a gift of the Almighty," he says, in English, the language he admits he is most comfortable with. His Urdu, Hindi, Persian or Sanskrit is barely enough to get him by, but they still make him "the most-sought-after Islamic speaker in the world", according to one of the embassies in its rejection letter.

Dr Naik's journey on the path of God and "submission to the God Almighty" came fairly late in life. He was a practising doctor, an MBBS from Nair Hospital, when he decided to give it up with permission from his father, also a doctor. 

Perhaps that is why he insists he can scientifically prove that God exists. Atheists reject God because their definition of Him is wrong, Naik argues. Once they get the right definition even they would believe in him. Does that mean that belief in human good is not good enough? A good human is like an SSC pass, while submission to God is a post-graduate.