This is a response to the piece ‘Zakir Naik should preach to Muslims to follow Quran teachings’ written by Ravinder Singh, which appeared on malaysiakini.com on April 13, 2016.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” - John 8:32

It is strange what freedom of speech allows today. Some use it to express dissatisfaction with the government, some use it to express dissatisfaction with their day or the latest box office film. Some use it to post funny cat pictures; to each, his own.

However, the funny thing about freedom of speech is that it doesn’t assure that the statements made are borne of research, well-thought out arguments, and are free of logical fallacies. In fact, the only law that freedom of speech follows strictly is Sturgeon’s Law (which states 99 percent of everything is fodder), and our intellectual landscape is all the poorer for it.

While we are writing in response to the aforementioned Malaysiakini article, our primary purpose is not to rebut, but to educate. In a nation as diverse and multicultural as Malaysia, there is bound to be friction as identities, colours and cultures clash. Many will espouse understanding as the key to unity amongst diversity. Therefore, we shall do what we can by illuminating matters and banishing ignorance - in this part of our collective psyche, at least.

An enigma cosmic

What is the reason for our existence? Why does anything exist at all? This is a question posed infinite times throughout the history of human civilisation. Some manage to find the answer during their lifetime, yet others go to the grave with a void in their soul unfilled.

One constant theme which ties closely to this question eternal is the belief in a higher Being, a Creator and Sustainer which oversees the daily runnings of mankind. Any which belief system that attempts to provide any semblance of an answer must be made to stand by its own holy book or documents which lay the foundation for said system’s creed and other rulings pertaining to daily life.

As regards Islam, the Qur’an, which is the final Word of God and the conclusion to the original Torah and Gospels, is the keystone on which this way of life is built.

The message of the Qur’an

Enter Zakir Naik: a medical doctor dedicated to spreading the word of Islam as per the Qur’an and authentic ahadeeth (narrations) of the religion’s last prophet, Muhammad ibn Abdullah. Dr Zakir’s modus operandi is unconventional - he takes the path of comparative religion, a field which unwavering studiousness, considerably high thresholds of intelligence, and a keen ability to compare and contrast between the intricacies of belief systems are all imperative.

This verbose man of science travels all over the globe shedding light on both similarities and distinguishing characteristics between Islam and other faiths, drawing content from the Quran and also other holy books in his lectures. The ease with which he quotes verses from various religious scriptures when elaborating on myriad subject matter has become his trademark; few evangelists have exhibited his extent of scholarliness in public.

But what drives a man to pursue such endeavours? Allah (the Arabic, politically correct reference to God for Muslims) asks humanity in the Qur’an in verse 33 of chapter 41: “And who is better in speech than one who invites to Allah, and does righteousness, and says, ‘Indeed, I am one of the Muslims’?” Allah speaks again in verse 7 of chapter 47: “O you who have believed! If you help Allah (in His way), He will help you and will make your foothold firm.”

This is the spirit of motivation which should imbue the soul of each and every Muslim - to please Allah by not just avoiding what He has forbidden, but also by spreading His instruction to others both by word and by example.

The former verse mentioned in the previous paragraph is a clear reference to creed, which comprises not just physical worship of Allah, but the extinguishment of pride in the self. In an authentic narration, Muhammad the Prophet said, “Whoever lets his garment drag along the ground out of pride, Allah will not look at him on the Day of Resurrection.” The Prophet’s close aide Abu Bakr said, “Sometimes my garment slips down on one side, unless I pay attention to it.”

Muhammad said, “You are not doing that out of pride.” In the Qur’an, numerous times Allah reminds Man that he was once but a helpless seed so as to make clear that pride is exclusively His domain. Although what lies in the heart is for Allah alone to decide, we can derive from here that it would be quite the contradiction for a caller to Islam engaging in such noble pursuits to do so as a form of servitude to his ego and not to Allah.

Let us therefore not fault Dr Zakir for speaking out - a man as well-versed in the Quran and ahadeeth as he could not simply sit by and watch mankind fall to the ignorance of not being familiar with the manual to life written by the Lord of the worlds. In a hadeeth, the Prophet points out that Islam will reach every nook and cranny of the earth.

A person with Dr Zakir’s intellect and oratory capability has the moral obligation to do so, and he may very well be held sinful for retreating to the comforts of routine, daily life. The message to be delivered is not meant just for Muslim ears; if he were to do that, then and only then would claims of egotism on his part would hold any water, for where better to find agreement than those who already believe?

Where better to find approval than those who already approve of the message? If one would like backup singers, one may preach to the choir. If one wishes for agreement, one may go to the parrots for mimicry. No, the message is for Muslim and non-Muslim alike - to reaffirm the faith of the former, and to bring glad tidings (that overwhelm and precede stern warning) to the latter.

Previously, we spoke of the obligation to spread Islam and why its message is for all, not just Muslims. Today, we shall be elaborating further on creed, ‘fitrah’ or the pure state of the human being at birth, and why there is a need to convey across the world the word of a divinely-inspired code of conduct, not keep it to ourselves.

Of faith, fitrah, and mercy

Pondering further on the subject of creed, one might be led to ask oneself, “If there is a God, how does one come to the conclusion of which belief system makes proper reference to Him?” The Qur’an provides the answer to this in chapter 112: “Say, ‘Allah is One, the Absolute. He does not beget, nor is He begotten. And there is none unto like Him.’” This is monotheism in its purest form, and this is the looking glass through which an individual should recognise his Lord.

“If Islam is the religion meant for humankind, then why has Allah allowed for a multitude of peoples of different faiths?” one may wonder. To this question, we can find the answer in the authentic narration: “No babe is born but upon fitrah (his natural, pure state). It his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a polytheist.”

If a Muslim were to be honest to himself, the various versions of this narration indeed do not specifically mention the word “Islam” when referring to the state of purity in which a child is born. However, if again one were to be honest to oneself, one would notice that the narration states other belief systems that were present during the Prophet’s time as distinguished from fitrah.

Allah mentions in the Qur’an in verse 19 of chapter 3: “Indeed, the religion in the sight of Allah is Islam.” Islam is not mentioned literally in repetition in the Qur’an, but rather as a running theme of the submissive state to Allah that Man should be in, as if it were a constant, a default, and that to profess another faith would be wayward of this nascent condition.

A sincere reader of the Qu’ran and ahadeeth would acknowledge this; no other conclusion could be drawn from the narration above when taking into account the grander picture of the purpose of Muhammad’s prophethood and considering the historical conditions in which clashing civilisations and ideologies existed when the Qur’an was descended.

It is from this conclusion that Dr Zakir speaks. We have already established that Dr Zakir is a well-read Muslim scholar, so it is quite the impossibility that he would have missed this part in his studies. Unlike many, he states upfront his mission statement: to help as many people as he can to return to fitrah, to return to the submissive state to Allah that we were born in, by means congruent to his intellectual prowess.

In this way, he is more honest and true than many speakers today. Also, as a man of science, he knows full well the need to have a written basis for the points he makes; anything that is simply born from a person’s judgment is anecdotal, and cannot be a reliable source of contention. His source is the Qur’an and ahadeeth, and it is upon this basis that he makes his claims.

Taking the above need for claims to be made on scripture, how can Man then naively claim to have knowledge of what God intended for him in the absence of clear religious text, free of error? Based on what do we speak of God desiring goodwill and humanity alone from His creation?

No doubt, a sense of right and wrong are elemental of fitrah, but only to an extent. And simply saying that we are only meant to spread goodwill and humanity is excellent lip service and purely an appeal to emotion, but not much more.

As an example, one can find that the legal ages of sexual consent vary between 14 and 18 years between countries in Europe alone. This is not to say that there are no Muslims who consummate their marriage between these ages and that Islam has a set age point after when should only one begin to engage in intercourse. Rather, it goes to show that the morals of men are malleable and ductile.

Imagine that in one country, intercourse with a 16-year-old is all well and good, yet cross a man-made boundary and suddenly it becomes an evil act punishable by imprisonment. More peculiar yet would be to imagine if the legal age of consent were raised in the same country - the law-abiding citizen of yesterday is suddenly now a reprehensible monster. Where is the basis here?

What Islam intends to avert is disorderliness and irresponsibility; in the abovementioned case, anyone may engage in sex within the confines of marriage (a notion slowly losing value in today’s world), with marriage itself having applicable terms and conditions to safeguard its integrity and sanctity.

One such example of aforesaid moral inconsistency to go viral on social media in recent days (and a rather extreme example at that) is a tweet by psychologist Dr Eric Sprankle. He said, “If you think sex workers ‘sell their bodies’, but coal miners do not, your view of labor is clouded by your moralistic view of sexuality.”

This strange message (whose meaning may not be immediately apparent) has been echoed and agreed by many. It is dizzying, the number of questions such an occurrence invokes; what is one to make of this? Has mankind really been left to itself by the divine, free to do as it pleases? As a race, our progess in technology and science has been remarkable, but can the same be said of our very humanity? Or have we become more and more animal in nature?

Thoughts such as Dr Sprankle’s may (for the time being, that is) be diminutive, a slip of conscience of a small quarter of society. But history proves that humankind has shown equal flippancy in other matters which have a significant impact on society at large. What we deem now to be a lewd form of moral corruption may very well become the norm in time to come.

This only goes to show that without a gold standard, what Man holds to be good and bad are only relative in nature and subject to change of the most extreme kind. Islam only yearns to elevate and refine man’s inbuilt sense of right and wrong, creating equity (not equality) for all in the process.

Nonetheless, this is not to say that Islam has no recognition for man-made laws. Islam, in fact, allows for a considerable amount of human judgment in relation to criminal wrongdoing according to what the current governing entity of the nation sees fit; set punishments are only for a small number of felonies. An authentic hadeeth states that “every innovation is a misguidance and every misguidance (will be) in Hell.”

At first take, this narration may sound conservative, primitive and may be seen as an indicator of the close-mindedness of early Muslims. On elaboration, though, what is referred to as misguidance here only concerns rituals of worship and not worldly affairs.

Islam does not expect its adherents to ride camels as did the generations of old, and it sanctions knowledge which is beneficial to mankind, but it does expect a consistency in deemed virtues in tandem with the material progress mankind makes.

On a side note, it is worthy to mention that in the above hadeeth, to say that the Prophet warned against deviancy in matters of religion as opposed to acts of worship alone would be imprecise, considering that Islam holds everything in this life as part of religious practice. There is not a single moment of existence that the soul, either in spiritual or physical form, is ever outside of the domain of God, thus re-emphasising the notion of obedience to Him as a concept imperative.

Is there safety, then, for a person who, after having received the message of Islam in its proper form, chooses another way of life anyway and meets his demise in said state?

Allah says in verse 15 of chapter 17 of the Qur’an: “And never would We punish until We sent a messenger.” Allah also says in verses 172 and 173 of chapter 7: “And recall when your Lord brought forth descendants from the loins of the sons of Adam, and made them witnesses against their ownselves, asking them, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yes, we do testify.’ We did so lest you claim on the Day of Resurrection, ‘We were unaware of this.’

Or so lest you claim, ‘It was only that our fathers associated (others in worship) with Allah before, and we were but descendants after them. Then, would You destroy us for what the falsifiers have done?’”

The worldly safety that Islam offers through its rulings and laws are for Muslims and non-Muslims alike (keeping in mind that jurisprudence changes according to time, place, and necessity), but creed and, consequently, tranquillity in the abode of the Hereafter is exclusively the observant Muslim’s.