The 'hungama' around Zakir Naik

I am no admirer of Zakir Naik. But since it was found that 1 of the Bangladesh Café attackers followed him on twitter and another one on Facebook, the media has gone to town virtually proclaiming him as the main inspiration for the attackers. He is being dubbed a ‘preacher of hate’ etc.

He has millions of followers on Twitter and Facebook and his TV channel ‘Peace TV’ reaches millions more across the world. He clearly denounces ISIS and has said in many speeches that in Islam ‘if someone takes one innocent life it is like killing the whole humanity’ etc

The logic that is being advanced against him holding him in some way responsible for the actions of some maniac killers just because they followed him on social media (by the way they also liked Man U, Shradhdha Kapoor etc etc), is quite ridiculous.

Let’s take a parallel.

On 22 July 2011, Anders Breivik detonated a bomb killing 8 and then gunned down 69 people in cold blood in Norway.

On the day of the attacks, Breivik electronically distributed a compendium of texts entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, describing his militant ideology.

In this manifesto he hails the Hindutva forces in India and has also included the websites of BJP and RSS. He says they are his allies.

Please see the report published in ‘The Hindu’ on 1^st Aug 2011.

If we apply the same logic that is being applied for Zakir Naik today, should BJP & RSS be banned? Ironically these same forces are calling for Zakir Naik to be banned today.

What double standards !!