Are You Kidding, Dr. Zakir Naik?

A few weeks back, while surfing the net, I came across a 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, but not with the content of his talks. Surprisingly, even after almost a decade, his style and content are still the same. During his seminars, he continuously throws verse numbers, page numbers, book names, and many other details for whatever he quotes from ancient scriptures of the major religions of the world. He became a very popular and influential figure among Indian Muslims and even started his own channel to propagate his views. He claims to do a comparative religious study, which, according to him, is to compare every other religion with Islam and try to prove how Islam is the best. His style sounds very impressive in the beginning; you get impressed by his memory, but then he overdoes this thing so much that after some time, his speech becomes irritating, monotonous, and utterly boring with so many page numbers and verse numbers. All you remember from his speech is 'this guy has a sharp memory' and nothing else. His speeches are rich in quotes and literature citations (bibliography) but mostly poor in content. If one wants to know who wrote what, and which particular lines are from which book, then his speeches may be a good source of this information, but now one can find all these things easily online so why tolerate this torture? He does a good job in translating verses, but many times his justifications, comparisons, and interpretations are biased and totally without any logic. One thing that I don't like is when he tries to intimidate questioners, especially from other faiths, by ridiculing their beliefs and questioning their knowledge about their own faith by throwing a lot of bibliographic information and verses. He tries to prove his superiority over them by throwing memorized material at them. It seems he draws a lot of pleasure in scoring brownie points against such individuals and feels satisfaction in humiliating them. He doesn't even try to listen to their point of view; his only intention seems to be to force his opinion down their throat. 

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  One should watch that video to see how pathetic his attempt was to justify something that is totally outdated in today's world.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

He justifies the practice of polygamy first by citing the verse from the 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 (that is, marry once, if possible!!) and it seems other religions allow as many marriages as man wants. Note that no religion gives females the same option. He further claims that even though at birth to male-to-female ratio is equal, it seems female infants are stronger than male, and because of this, there are more deaths of male children compared to female children. I don't know on what basis he draws this conclusion. So, according to him, among children, also male-to-female ratio is in favor of females (which is not true, check the table below and in ref. 2). The Female survival rate is higher for so many reasons: males die in larger numbers compared to females (alcohol, accidents, war, stress, etc.). However, if we look at the table, still ratio is still in favor of males in most countries for the 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 a few third-world countries like India. He does a good job in criticizing female feticide and infanticide in India, which has 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, for example, in the USA, if all males select their female partners, then there will still be some females left without any male partners. Here, he conveniently ignores gay and lesbian people. Now, these poor females are without any bachelor males, as all males are already engaged. 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 the woman questioner in an awkward position and tries to force her to accept his logic, even if he wants to justify polygamy. I think he can do a better job than this.

Now let's see whether his argument contains any truth, or it's 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, the male-to-female ratio is greater than 1 for most 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 the mortality rate is higher in males compared to females in later stages of life (after 65) due to various reasons. A lot of research has already been done in this area, and there is a lot of literature available about this for anyone who is interested in the reasons behind it. So, this argument of Dr. Naik about being more females than males in the world and especially in developed countries doesn't stand; rather, it's a totally opposite scenario (at least in the 15-64 age group).  Even if we take the example of some Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE, we can see in all age groups (except the age group above 65) M/F ratio is greater than 1 (in UAE it's 2.74 for the age group of 15-64). Let's have a look at the data for some selected countries from the reference. 2. 

 

Country/region	at birth (CIA estimate)	under 15	15–64	over 65	total	at birth WDB estimate)
Afghanistan	1.05	1.05	1.05	0.92	1.05	1.06
Brazil	1.05	1.04	0.98	0.73	0.98	1.05
Canada	1.056	1.05	1.02	0.78	0.98	1.05
India	1.12	1.13	1.07	0.9	1.08	1.08
Iran	1.05	1.05	1.02	0.92	1.02	1.05
Pakistan	1.10	1.06	1.05	0.88	1.09	1.05
Saudi Arabia	1.05	1.04	1.29	1.06	1.18	1.03
United States	1.05	1.04	1.00	0.75	0.97	1.05
UAE	1.05	1.05	2.74	1.82	2.19	1.05
UK	1.05	1.05	1.03	0.76	0.98	1.05

Now, after looking at this table, who has the 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 male) to maintain social harmony? I don't understand what his aim is behind misguiding people like this. Why is he doing this? If he wants to preach Islam or spread the teachings of the Qur'an, there is nothing wrong with it, but why insult other religions or scriptures? What does he want to achieve by doing that? He claims to study comparative religion, but all he does is insult religions other than Islam. Many others also do similar things; they compare their own beliefs with others to show how theirs is the 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 the wrong purpose; the sooner he understands this, is better for him. Millions of Muslims follow him, and he can use his influence to do something better rather than trying to insult people from other faiths who attend his gatherings.

A 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 is clear that with experience, our society evolved from polygamy to monogamy (one spouse at any one time). Scriptures or books have nothing to do with that. In the modern world, most countries have laws related to marriage; they don't try to follow any religious book for family law. Everything in our lives can not be controlled by any single religious book. Scriptures can be a valuable source of information for their followers, but they should not dictate what we should do in our bedrooms, or what we should eat or wear; common sense is enough for this. 

Thanks for reading, and please share your views.

References:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQaPBU5ppsk

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio 

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

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