Shiv Sena slams televangelist’s remarks

The Shiv Sena has attacked controversial televangelist Zakir Naik for his comments against Hindu deities.

An editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna  on Tuesday, while taking on Naik for his comments against Lord Ganesha, said, “Only Muslims have sentiments in this country. Hindus have no freedom to safeguard their feelings.”

The editorial in the newspaper — which has Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray as its editor and Rajya Sabha MP and spokesperson Sanjay Raut as its executive editor — questions why Naik, who calls himself an Islamic scholar, was criticising Hindu deities.

“People of each religion must take care of their individual faith and means of worship,” it stressed, pointing out that the teachings of religious texts had to be viewed in the context of the period in which they had been written.

“If thinkers like Zakir Naik take their fellow religionists from ignorance to knowledge, it will benefit the society,” the editorial said, lamenting that people like Naik, instead of taking people out of the clutches of obscurantism, were trying to ensure they are mired more deeply into it.

“Muslim leaders, mullahs, maulavis and parties like the Congress are interested in keeping Muslims in a state of ignorance and religious fundamentalism,” it said, also talking about the poor state of Muslim women and the state of education in madarssas.
“Hence,  the lives of the straightforward Muslims has become difficult in the entire Muslim community.”

It also pointed at how Libyans had taken on Muslim extremist groups in their country, and at violence across the globe over the cartoons of the Prophet in a French magazine and the controversial film Innocence of Muslims.

It charged that the policy of minority appeasement had led to a situation where the martyrs memorial was vandalised during the riots at Azad Maidan in August.