Couple of thoughts that sprang to my mind was, 'What took them so long?' and 'How hypocritical?'
I have a dear friend of mine who follows his speeches very carefully, and I am pretty sure the good Dr has a long list of followers.
So curious and having heard a lot about the charismatic doctor who gave up his practice to follow his calling, I decided to hear him on Peace TV.
First impressions, he definitely needs to fire his costume designer or whoever the heck it is who is in charge of his attire. He looks atrocious in the tuxedo.
And why are his trousers always 4 inches short??
However, once you struggle to move past this visual tragedy, he does come across as a fanatic who has amazing oratorical skills.
Most of the people in the audience looked disinterested and bored. Many of them kids with the Muslim skull cap.
His speeches are filled with logic that appears convulted and barbaric and suddenly I am able to understand why Islamic radicals have been able to run entire societies back to the middle ages in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As a rule, I believe religious leaders and preachers should not touch politics even with a barge pole, however this guy loves to dabble in pointing fingers. It escapes my understanding how blaming George bush for the 9/11 can help in religious harmony among the brotherhood religions of Christianity and Islam. He supports polygamy and stricter regulations for Islamic women.
However, as much as we like to hate people and ideologies that are opposite ours, the Countries that banned Zakir and the Preacher that got banned must understand that what goes around comes around.. To ban a person or an ideology is a knee jerk way of stepping around the real issue.
Most Western Countries would not dare ban Christian preachers who are radical and 'outspoken'. They would dare not ban artists and politicians that promote religious strife. A case in point is how the West treated the Danish Cartoonist with kid gloves instead of convicting him for causing communal discord. I personally cant imagine any artist going Scot free if he/she were to humiliate Jesus or even less, the Pope the same way.
Zakir Naik, in his true form, protested the British ban in a fit of moral outrage.
But he conveniently forgot how he would ban anti Islamic books, practices and people with a whiff of his fist. So, going by the same measure, he shouldn't complain when the British government is trying to banning him.
He is upset his freedom of expression is being stifled. He calls his television network 'Peace TV'. A complete misnomer, since it has nothing that promotes peace nor has anything that resembles harmony among humanity in any of its programs. Of course I can understand that Dr Naik needs to play to the galleries but how can a channel that is a platform to portray Islam as the most divine of religion promote peace. Of the half a dozen Christian channels that are broadcast, not one of them trashes other religions the way Peace TV does. This channel is nothing but a Muslim supremacist media. By questioning the legitimacy of other religions he is not doing Islam any favor.
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His views on freedom are outrageous and this would be an understatement. He is all for equal rights for Muslims in non Islamic countries but not the reverse. Why? Because Islam is the right religion. Or so, Dr Naik professes eloquently. And if you think otherwise, he would muffle your debate with Islamic rhetoric.
As an Indian, living in India, if not for all his education and the many many liberties that he enjoys and could be taking for granted, he forgot that there are many reasons why India has survived several centuries of oppression and occupation is because we as a Civilization believe that there are many paths and different ways to get to our common goal; Eternity.
In a planet that is armed to the teeth and baying for blood, we can do without preachers and politicians that are hypocritical and can steer clear of each others profession.
We've had far too many fundamentalist and great orators that have created enough divisions and strife in humanity and its not even a century since all this happened ! At the rate things are going, we are heading to a nuclear showdown. And none of the Islamic BS Dr Naik preaches is going to immunize all the Islamic brotherhood from the same destruction that humanity will face.
We must do away with preachers of hate rhetoric. Religious Tolerance and Unity. Is that too much to ask?
Religion was supposed to bring in Harmony and Peace. Where did we go so wrong?
