Wed 26 August 2020:
Islamist preacher Zakir Naik in a recent video on YouTube urged Muslims to united behind a single political party and suggested that they should perform ‘Hijra’ (migration) if they are unable to perform their daily rituals. He made the remarks during a response to a question from one of India followers living in Kuwait.
Zakir Naik said, “Do you know we Muslims, Alhamdulillah, according to the official statistics of the Indian government more than ten years back, it says that Muslims are 14.2% (of the Indian population) and a few years back they said that we are more than 200 million Muslims in India.” He claimed that this figure was without counting many Muslims in Assam and other parts of India.
Muslim Population
“Actually, according to me, the Muslims will be close to 250 to 300 million in India. The government suppresses the figure. Officially, Indonesia is counted as the country which has the maximum number of Muslims… but according to me, number 1 in the world, the country which has maximum number of Muslims, it is my beloved country India,” the Islamic preacher said.
Zakir Naik was speaking on the “Solution to overcome the harassment and oppression of the Muslims in India by the fascist BJP Govt”. He said, “Politically, we should have only one party. We Muslims should make another political party exclusively, only, for Muslims. And this party should be a force by itself.” He said that this party should be of all Muslims regardless of the sect that they belong to.
Join hands with Dalits
He futher say that Muslims should join hands with Dalits in order to increase their strength and claims that Dalits are not Hindus. “We will be close to 600 million, more than 40 per cent of the population. We can join hands with the other minorities and then we will be a bigger force.” Effectively, he is saying that Hindus are less than 60 per cent of the population. The preacher further says that Muslims should support those parties that are not ‘communal’.
Hijra (Migration)
The Islamic preacher then elaborated on another solution for Muslims individually. He said, “If you feel that you cannot do you farayz, you cannot do most of your Sunnah, then Allah clearly mentions in Surah Nisa, chapter number 4, verse 97 that you have to do Hijra.” He then says that Hijra can be of various types. A Muslim could flee to a Muslim majority country or in a state within India or a different city within a state or a different area within the same city.
“What you can do is do Hijra to a different state which is more lenient towards Muslims.. The best state I can think of is Kerala,” Zakir Naik stated. He said that the demographics of the state are in the favour of Muslims where people are not ‘communal’ in nature. he also mentions that the BJP government does not have much hold over Kerala. Hyderabad and Mumbai are other non-communal places he mentions.
However, he says that the best option is to do Hijra, i.e. migrate to a Muslim country.
