Are you kidding Dr. Zakir Naik?

Few weeks back while surfing on the net, I came across few YouTube videos of Dr. Zakir Naik's seminars and Q&A sessions. I heard him long ago when I was in India on cable TV and was impressed by his sharp memory and accuracy but not with the content of his talks, surprisingly after almost a decade his style and contents are still same. During his seminars he continuously throws verse numbers, page numbers, book names, and many other details for all lines (or verses) which he quotes from ancient scriptures of major religions of world. He became very popular and influential figure among Indian Muslims and even started his own channel to propagate his views. He claims to do comparative religious study, which according to him is to compare every other religion with Islam and try to prove how Islam is best compared to them (aren't most fundamentalist do the same thing?). His style sounds very impressive in the beginning (you get impressed by his memory) but then he overdoes this thing so much that after sometime his speech becomes irritating, monotonous and utterly boring with so many page numbers and verse numbers in them, all you remember from his speech is 'this guy has sharp memory' nothing else. His speeches are rich in quotes, literature citations (bibliography) but mostly poor in contents. If one want to know who wrote what, particular lines are from which book, then his speeches are good source to know it, but now one can find all these things easily online so why to tolerate his torture? He does a good job in translating verses but many times his justifications, comparisons - and interpretations are totally without any logic (or he uses his own logic most of the times). One thing which I don't like is when he tries to intimidate questioners especially from other faiths by ridiculing their belief, questioning their knowledge about their own faith by throwing lot of bibliographic information and verses (no doubt that he knows lot of them). He tries to prove his superiority over them. It seems he draws lot of pleasure in scoring brownie points against them and feels satisfaction in humiliating the questioner, he doesn't even try to listen to their point of view but it seems his only intention is to force his opinion down to their throat. 

This post is not about Islam or Qur'an, their mention is only in context with Zakir Naik's this particular talk which I want to discuss. Recently I heard part of his speech where he tried to justify polygamy allowed in Islam (ref. 1).  One should watch that video to see how pathetic was his attempt to justify something which is totally outdated in today's world. According to him it seems that whatever is written in Qur'an is law and then he takes the task of justifying them. No doubt Qur'an is wonderful and very well respected book. It's basis of one of the popular religions of the modern world. According to me there is very specific reason why polygamy was allowed in Qur'an, I think social and political situation at that time resulted in huge difference in male to female ratio (in favor of females) and to maintain social balance polygamy was permitted. All religious scriptures were written in certain era, they all have many things which are still relevant today and we should study them for our own benefit, but at the same time we should also understand that most of them have many things which are out dated now and are not relevant in today's world. It's surprising to see that many people expect us to take these scriptures verbatim, and follow each and everything mentioned in them. 

He justifies the practice of polygamy first by citing the verse from Qur'an which says 'marry women of your choice in 2s, 3s or 4s but if you can't do justice then marry only once' (ref. 1). He also claims that only Qur'an tells person (male) to marry once (if possible) rest all scriptures from other religions doesn't say anything like this about marriage (marry once, if possible!!) and it seems allow as many marriages as man wants (no one is giving females any option here). He further claims that even though at birth male to female ratio is equal, it seems female infant is stronger than male!! and according to him because of this there are more deaths of male child compared to female child (I don't know on what basis he draws this conclusion). So, according to him in children it self male to female ratio is in favor of females (which is not true, check the table below and in ref. 2). Female survival rate is more because of so many reasons males die in larger number compared to females (alcohol, accidents, war, stress, etc.) which is true but if we look at the table still ratio is in favor of males in most of countries for age group 15-65, it shifts heavily in favor of females only after age 65. Then he further claims that due to all this there are more females in the world compared to males except in few third world countries like India (but now we know the exact reason behind this). He does a good job in criticizing female feticide and infanticide in India which affected this ratio, good to see that he  speaks against it. Then he continues his argument and puts one hypothetical scenario where because of more females than men, particularly he takes example of USA, if all males select their female partners then there will be still some females left without any male partners. Here he conveniently ignores gay and lesbian couples. These poor females are now in a world or city without any bachelor males (as they are all already  engaged, wow fiction at its best!!). It seems now they have only two options, one is to marry with already married male (become a second wife) or become a 'Public Property'. I don't know what he means by 'public property'. Also notice how he puts that women questioner in awkward-  position and tries to force her to accept his logic, even if he want to justify polygamy I think he can do better job than this.

Now lets see whether his argument contains any truth or its all crap. If you look at the list of countries by sex ratio (ref. 2), it's very clear that in most of the countries male to female ratio is greater than 1 for most of age groups (that is more males compared to females) except for the group above age 65, in this age group (65 and above) in most countries females are in much larger number compared to males. We all know that mortality rate is higher in males compared to females in later stages of life (after 65) due to various reasons. Lot of research has been already dome in this area and there is lot of literature available about this for any one who is interested in reasons behind it. So, this argument of Dr. Naik about being more females per male in world and specially in developed countries doesn't- stand rather its totally opposite scenario (in 15-64 age group).  Even if we take example of some Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE we can see in all age groups (except age group above 65) M/F ration is greater than 1 (in UAE it's 2.74 for age group of 15-64). Let's have a look at data for some selected countries from ref. 2. 

Now after looking at this table who has possibility of becoming 'public property' by his logic, male or female? And based on this logic will he support polyandry (one female marrying more than one males) to maintain social harmony? I don't understand what is his aim behind misguiding people like this? Why he is doing this? If he wants to preach Islam or spread teachings of Qur'an, there is nothing wrong in it, but why he intends to show that other religions or scriptures are inferior compared to his own? What he want to achieve by doing that? He claims to study comparative religion, but comparison for what? Do we need to compare them? There are many people who do similar things (compare their own beliefs with others to show how theirs is better and best) and Dr. Naik is also one of them. I don't know why people like him believe that they have to prove all others wrong to show that they are right. He is using all his talent or knowledge for wrong purpose, sooner he understands this it is better for him. Millions of Muslims follow him, he can use his influence to do something better than trying to convert people from other faiths to Islam.

Lot of research has been done in the area of anthropology and social science. Many marriage systems (like polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, monogamy, etc) have been studied and researched, based on all this research it's is clear that with experience our society evolved from polygamy (or polyandry in some cases) to monogamy (one spouse at any one time), scriptures or books have nothing to do with that. In modern world every country and society has laws to control these things and it should be respected. Everything in our life can not be controlled by any single book. Scriptures are valuable and they are very good guiding tools but they should not dictate what we should do in our bedrooms, what we should eat or wear, common sense is enough for this. Scriptures are for spiritual guidance and should be used for that.

Thanks for reading and please share your views.

References:

1. http://- www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQaPBU- 5ppsk

2. http://en.wikipedia.o- rg/wiki/List_of_countries_by_s- ex_ratio

3. http://en.wikipedi- a.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

(C- opyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)