Behind the Shah Faisal Award: Zakir Naik among awardees who promoted political Islamism

The Shah Faisal award is an international annual prize sponsored by the King Faisal Foundation in Saudi Arabia. It is presented to “dedicated men and women whose contributions make a positive difference”.  This is the most prestigious prize in the Muslim world — similar to the Nobel Prize — through which the committee of the King Faisal International Prize (KFIP) recognises the outstanding work of individuals and institutions in five major categories: “Service to Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic Language and Literature, Medicine, and Science”, as clearly stated in the official website of KFIP .

The Indian Islamist televangelist Zakir Naik has also been accorded this most prestigious and lucrative award. According to a report in Arab News, the president of the Islamic Research Foundation of India, Naik won the 2015 King Faisal International Prize (KFIP) for his “Service to Islam”. It was announced by the Prince Khaled Al-Faisal and KFIP Secretary-General Abdullah Al-Othaimeen .

The official website of Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) has detailed the awards and prizes that Naik has received from the wealthiest Arab Shaikhs throughout his clerical career as Islamist televangelist. Among scores of money prizes and lucrative awards, he was given the two most prestigious awards. The first is the ‘King Faisal International Prize 2015’ which was presented by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud for ‘Service to Islam’ on 1st March 2015 in Riyadh.

It comprised a commemorative 24-carat 200-gram gold medal and Saudi Riyals 750,000 ($200,000).

The second most lucrative prize was the Dubai International Holy Qur’an Award’s ‘Islamic Personality of 2013’ which was presented by Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE. This was also for Zakir Naik’s ‘outstanding service to Islam and Muslims at a global level in Media, Education and Philanthropy’. He received UAE Dirhams one million ($272,000) which he donated to start a Waqf (endowment) fund for the Peace TV Network.

Interestingly, the King Faisal International Award was first conferred upon the pioneer of modern political Islamism, Sayyid Abul Ala’a Al-Maududi in 1979 in recognition to his ‘momentous service to Islam’ and his ‘renewal of Islamic thought in such a way that it dominates the lives of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent’, as clearly stated on the official website of the KFF.

Afterwards, in 1980, it was also accorded to Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadawi, the former rector of Darul Uloom Nadwa in Lucknow, and in 1982 to Shaikh Abd Al-Aziz Ibn bin Baz, the former Saudi cleric, and in 1994 to the leading Salafist jurist (mufti) Shaikh Mohammad Bin Saleh Al-Uthaimin, and in 2010 to the current Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, among many other global Islamist figures. One thing is common among all the recipients of this most prestigious Saudi award. They all espouse political Islamism in their actions and words.

The content of the website about the first category “Service to Islam” is very interesting and stimulating for the avowed Islamist preachers rendering ‘service to Islam’ in aspiration to achieve the award from the kingdom. It writes that the award is meant to encourage those actively engaged in ‘services to Islam through knowledge and deeds and other outstanding services leading to the domination of the religion over the globe. It reads:

“In awarding the Service to Islam prize, the selection committee recognizes individuals and institutions with outstanding records of service to Islam and Muslims, worldwide… One is considered qualified to win the King Faisal International Service to Islam Prize, if they rendered exceptional services to Islam and Muslims through knowledge and deeds, or provided other outstanding services leading to far-reaching benefits to Islam and Muslims, and meeting one or more of the prize’s objectives as determined by the respective Selection Committee”

The website explains the reason the first Shah Prize for service to Islam was given away to the 19th Century radical Islamist theologian and promulgator of the political Islamism throughout the Indian subcontinent:

“Abul Ala’a Al-Mowdoodi was awarded the Prize in recognition of his ‘services to Islam’ as following:

1. The laureate contributed extensively to Islamic journalism since his early youth. 2. He has effectively advocated the renewal of Islamic thought, such that it dominates the lives of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. 3. He is considered by many as the most influential Islamic philosopher of the 20th Century. His life and thoughts have been researched ever since by scholars worldwide”.

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Reproduced below is the translation of the fundamental excerpts from Maulana Maududi’s Arabic letter that he wrote to the Saudi Kingdom in appreciation of its award. Owing to his failing health, it was presented to his son Hussein F Mowdoodi in a ceremony on 28 February, 1979:

“In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate Praise is to Allah the only God, praise be to the Almighty God, the Lord of heavens and earth and everything existent in them, who says in his Holy Book: Let there arise of you a group of people inviting to all that is good enjoying Al-Ma’ruf and forbidding Al-Munkar. And it is they who are the successful”.

“Your Majesty King Khalid Ibn Abd Al-Aziz,

Your Royal Highness Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, Chairman of the King Faisal International Prize Board

Your Excellencies, the members of the reverend committee

I would have been very delighted to attend by myself this pleasant event, but my severe illness forced me to delegate my close colleague, his eminence Sheikh Cahill Ahmad AL-Hamada, to head some of my sons on behalf of me to attend this good event”….“I ask Allah to always bestow upon him goodness and success, and convey my best regards and earnest longings to His Majesty and the group of my brothers, my colleagues, in propagating call for God’s religion”.

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“My good brothers, I was very impressed when your reverend committee recruitment chooses me to win the King Faisal International Prize for what I did of a modest service to propagate the religion of truth, strength and freedom with a support and help of God the Almighty”…. “What I did deserves no praise, because it is a part of my duty towards my religion as much as it is the duty of every Muslim, whether he is a man or woman. Each must do it as possible as he can; using all what he was granted by God of capabilities. How much the work was great, it looks tiny compared to what we must do to suit the high rank of Islam that we belong to”.

“I congratulate, in particular, the sons of the late King Faisal who established this great charitable work, which is the first philanthropic work, as far as I know that has been established in the contemporary Muslim world".

“I ask him also to make this benevolent work a strong incentive to develop the efforts for Islamic studies, and an effective circle in the international Islamic movement which exerts great efforts to curb the destructive principles and the secular systems, and sacrifices a lot to revive Islam and ensure its dominance on this globe as a system, civilisation and Shari’ah. In conclusion, I am pleased to pronounce, in front of you, that this prize will be spent for the sake of serving Islam and supporting efforts exerted to apply the Islamic rules in Pakistan”.

Two points in particular need to be noted in this letter of appreciation by Maulana Abul Ala’a Al-Maududi, the founder-idealogue of Jamat-e-Islami and the winner of King Faisal International Prize for ‘Service to Islam’ in 1979:

First, Maulana Maududi begins to express his deepest gratitude to the Saudi Kingdom by reciting a verse from the Qur’an (3:104), which is the one of the most misinterpreted Qur’anic verses used by the extremist Islamists the world over. As mentioned in Maududi’s translation of the Qur’an, called Tafhim-ul-Qur’an (Towards Understanding the Quran), he has translated this verse as following:

“And from among you there must be a party who invite people to all that is good and enjoin the doing of all that is right and forbid the doing of all that is wrong. It is they who will attain true success”.

This verse (3:104) does exist in the Qur’an but the translation as well as the commentary has been misconstrued by the political Islamist ideologues. In fact, Qur’an has evolved a coherent and consistent doctrine in this verse with a spiritual and moral trajectory. Known as “Amr bil Ma’ruf wa Nahi an al Munkar” (Enjoining good and forbidding evil), there is an essential Islamic doctrine enunciated in this Qur’anic verse. A modernist Qur’an exegete Muhammad Yunus, who has been engaged in an in-depth study of the Qur’an, explains the rationale behind this verse in his book Essential Message of Islam (Amana Publications, USA, 2009) co-authored by Ashfaque Ullah Syed:

“The Qur’an enjoins what it calls Ma’ruf – which it connotes with doing good to others and behaving in the most decent and reasonable manner in the community, forbids the Munkar: all acts, gesture, and behaviour that run counter to reason and contradict all norms of good behaviour (3:104, 3:110, 7:157, 9:112, 22:41, 31:17).  For simplicity, we render these terms as the good (Ma’ruf) and the evil (Munkar)”.

But the question arises: Who will be responsible for ’enjoining good (Ma’ruf)’ and ‘forbidding the evil (Munkar)’? Is it left to the discretion of a political Islamist party like Jamaat-e-Islami or an extremist Islamist outfit like the Islamic State to declare what is good (Ma’ruf) and what is evil (Munkar)? Of course, it is not actually so. But this is what the translation of Maulana Maududi connotes, as he rendered the Qur’anic term “ummah” in this verse, which actually means ‘nation’ or ‘community’, into ‘party’.

And, therefore, he founded his political Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami — in 1941 in the undivided India — which continues to operate today in many parts of the world where Muslims live in majority or minority including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Great Britain, and Afghanistan. Noteworthy is that Jamaat-e-Islami was founded in India on the same ideological base of political Islamism which the Islamist outfit Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin) of the Islamist theologian Hasan al-Banna established in 1926 Egypt.

Bereft of its moral trajectory and deeper spiritual exhortation, this verse has long been misconstrued by the political Islamist ideologues and preachers to accord the political authority to a ‘political Islamist party’ or ‘religious police’ or what is called “Mutawwa” or “Mutaween” in Saudi Arabia. The pioneer of political Islamism and founder of the Saudi state religion — Wahhabism —Shaikh Ibn Tamiyyah has written a complete book on this subject titled Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong. He was the first to propound a totalitarian theology misconstruing the Qur’anic concepts of al-ma’ruf (good) and al-munkar (evil).

It was later championed by his ardent follower Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab.

Ibn-e-Taimiya writes on in his book Enjoining Al-Maruf And Forbidding Al-Munkar (page number 6):

“Since jihad is part of the perfection of enjoining good and forbidding evil, it, too, is a collective obligation. As with any collective obligation, this means that if those sufficient for the task do not come forward, everyone capable of it to any extent is in sin to the extent of his capability in that area. This is because its obligation, when it is needed, is upon every Muslim to the extent of his/her ability.”

However, a majority of the progressive Islamic thinkers like the Qur’an exegete Muhammad Yunus delegitimise it.

Muhammad Yunus writes that “the notion of a community’s selective group, elders or Religious Police actualising the bidding to Ma’ruf on behalf of the whole community does not appear to be compatible with the Qur’anic message”. He buttresses his point with concrete theological underpinnings:

“One of the major paradigm shifts in religious thought the Qur’an introduced was the personal accountability of each individual for his/ her deeds and moral uprightness (Taqwa). Accordingly, the Qur’an commands individuals to do good deeds, exercise Zakah and Taqwa, and abide by its social, moral and ethical tenets and behavioural paradigms (eschewing greed, arrogance, slander, calumny, foul talk, backbiting for example). As illustrated in the foregoing by referencing Qur’anic verses, it commands the Muslims to conduct themselves in the most honourable (Ma’ruf) manner in day to day family life and cites a man of wisdom, Luqman advising his son to “enjoin good (Ma’ruf) and forbid evil” (31:16), pointing to the personal onus of compliance. A number of Qur’anic verses reinforce this notion by declaring: “no bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another (6:164, 17:15, 35:18, 39:07, and 53:38).” Moreover, there is no word, practically anywhere in the Qur’an about any collective responsibility in any matter pertaining to religion”.

But, brazenly violating the spiritual essence of the Qur’anic doctrine — “enjoining good and forbidding the evil”— political Islamists have taken it upon themselves to correct whatever they view as ‘evil’ (al-munkar) in socio-political affairs of their countries. One of the gravest evils in their sight is secularism or democracy which is included in their scheme of a_l-munkar_. Note the above reference to Maulana Maududi’s speech in which he despises secularism, encouraging the Saudi Kingdom’s initiative of running an international Islamic movement “which exerts great efforts to curb the destructive principles and the secular systems, and sacrifices a lot to revive Islam and ensure its dominance on this globe as a system, civilisation and Shari’ah”.

When the Jamaat-e-Islami’s founder-ideologue has shown an unequivocal abhorrence of secularism replacing it with the so-called Shariah and encouraging every Muslim individual to exert efforts to apply “the Islamic rules as in Pakistan”, the political Islamists’ anti-secularism and their dance of destruction against pluralism in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are no surprise.

It is not least expected even in India. In all these countries, extremist political Islamists, emboldened by the governments’ indifference to this divisive worldview, have slaughtered free-thinkers, secularist bloggers, progressive intellectuals, non-militant social activists, feminists, non-Muslim preachers and moderate Islamic scholars.  This is how a ‘party’ or ‘group’ of political Islamists have been enjoining good and forbidding the evil.

A few instances of this widespread phenomenon of violent jihadism in the name of ‘enjoining good and forbidding evil’ will shock a normal rational human.

On 11 March, 2002, the Religious Police in Saudi Arabia (Mutaween) did not allow school girls from escaping a burning school, because they were not wearing headscarves or black robes (abayas), nor they were accompanied by a male guardian. As a result, 15 girls died and 50 were injured. And this is how the Mutaween’s religious zealots were “enjoining right and forbidding the evil”. This nefarious incident which took place in Mecca, the holiest city of Islam, was brought out by the progressive Saudi newspapers. For instance, the mainstream Saudi daily in Arabic Okaz published it considering it a brazen violation of human right and urging the government to launch an investigation into it.

In Bangladesh, the largest radical Islamist outfit Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, badly mistreated a Bangladeshi woman journalist, Nadia Sharmeen, a staff reporter for Ekushey Television (ETV). In his book Political Islam and The Elections in Bangladesh, Francis Harrison has given a distressing account Sharmeen in her own words :

“I am a crime reporter and I know that I might find myself in a difficult situation now and then. But this wasn’t anything I had ever experienced. They were like a bunch of hyenas, or wild dogs, not human. I thought then, and I think now, that they wanted to kill me. They (Hefazat-e-Islam members) wanted to tear me apart, limb by limb. Why else would they start beating me from Paltan all the way to Bijoynagar? They hit every conceivable part of my body. I had to have two CT scans and ultrasonography to see if my abdomen and some other parts inside my body were alright, four X-rays of my left knee joint, left shoulder, neck.”

Hefazat’s goons attacked on Nadia Sharmeen because she happened to be a woman journalist and went to cover an Islamic event of the political Islamist outfit that does not approve of this liberty for a woman. This was self-evident when the Hefazat’s volunteers shouted to her: “Haven’t you read our 13-point demands? Why are you here? Don’t you know women can’t be here?”

More deplorably, the Hefazat’s chieftain misused a Qur’anic verse of the Surah al-Ahzab (33:33) to justify this un-Islamic restriction on women. He addressed women of Bangladesh in his speech:

“Oh women, if you believe in the book of Allah, remain within the four walls of your home. Do not stray outside the home…..You must stay in your husband’s home, protect your husband’s belongings, and raise children. These are your duties. Why should you go out? …. “O people! Your women are educated in schools, colleges, and universities. You should educate them up to grade four or five. That way, after you marry her off, she can do bookkeeping for her husband’s earnings. That is enough.”

Formed in January 2010 with an aim to protest against the women’s equal rights policy of the Bangladeshi democratic government, Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh has been vehemently opposed to all schemes of the government focused on women empowerment in the country. The Emir of the Hefazat Maulana Shafi, a graduate of Darul Uloom Deoband of India, warned the government with 13-point demands including a blackout ban on women working outside and girls going to schools, colleges or universities after Class IV or V.

Noteworthy is Maulvi Shafi’s quotation from the Qur’an that is the verbatim translation that Maulana Maududi had done in his Tafhim al-Qur’an. He translated and interpreted the aforementioned verse in a clear contradiction to the essential Qur’anic spirit. The actual meaning of this verse, as many Islamic scholars like Dr Tahirul Qadri tell us, is that women are exhorted to “live in their houses with calm and peace”, and not “within the four walls of house”.

The Arabic verb ‘Qarna’ used in this verse has been driven from the root word “al-qarār” meaning peace, “calm” and “comfort”. Hence, the Qur’an does not restrict women “within the four walls of their homes”, nor does it prohibit them from going or working outside, as the Hefazat’s leader Maulana Shafi says in compliance with the translation of Maulana Maududi, the founder-ideologue of Jamat-e-Islami.

One wonders if this is the ‘exceptional service to Islam and Muslims for which the Saudi Kingdom has honoured Maulana Maududi and the ilk with its most prestigious award, King Faisal International Prize. What “outstanding services” and “far-reaching benefits to Islam and Muslims these ideologues of political Islamism did in the view of the Kingdom?

The author is a scholar of Comparative Religion, Classical Arabic and Islamic sciences, cultural analyst and researcher in Media and Communication Studies