Among the most fundamental teachings of Bhagavad Gita and every other Hindu scripture without an exception is what Krishna explains in his Gita Shloka “I am formless, and also it is I, who is present in everything and every being.”
Zakir Naik uses the same Gita, takes the first half of this shloka and picks the “formless” word , conveniently dumps the second part where Krishna says I am present everywhere(which is the basis of Hinduism), and portrays that Hindus don’t know their own scriptures when they worship God through Idols and that they should only worship the truly formless God in the name of Allah. This is the dirty game Zakir Naik is playing in the name of religion to convert gullible Hindus. He didn’t spare God and now he blames media of taking his speeches out of context.
Is Zakir Naik’s explanation of Allah truly formless?
I have respect for Islam and consider it one of the ways to reach God, but not the only way. I have limited knowledge of Islam and my understanding is based on what Zakir Naik presents islam to be. This post is a refutal to Zakir Naik’s allegations on Hinduism.
The biggest claim of Zakir is that true God Allah is formless and that is why Hindu way of worship is wrong, but his own definition of God restricts God into form.
Zakir Naik has categorically stated that Allah lives above in the heavens and sits on an arsh, i.e a throne. So one question that arises is how can formless sit on a throne because then God will have to take the form of Throne to sit and wont be formless anymore. He also specifically says allah is not present everywhere in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGYWIxyxEc
There is a deeper question. As swami vivekananda puts it in his book jnana Yoga –
If you know something is present but it has no form or shape, there where is it present? Afterall, If you can point out and say it is present only here and not anywhere else then it becomes confined to that space and doesn’t remain formless. It has be present everywhere. Thus the basic property for a Truly formless entity has to be that it is present everywhere. And this is how Brahman is infinite and Omnipresent. This explanation is part of Jnana Yoga or Sankhya Yoga – The yoga of realising God through knowledge and reasoning.
Understanding formless.
Is air truly formless? No, it’s not, it has an invisible form but it always has a form. You mix some color into air and its form becomes visible. Is Gravitation formless? Again, no. For example the gravitation force of earth has a spherical form around earth and it acts within that sphere. Everything that is present in this universe has a form. Only the omnipresent Consciousness that is brahman has no form. This is the reason why formless is so important definition of God because everything else in this universe has a Rupa (form).
There are many sects in Islam that believe Allah is everywhere and logic also seem to suggest that to be true. Thus people with reasoning should rethink whether Zakir Naik is presenting the true picture of Islam logically.
Now, this formless impersonal consciousness that is present in Hinduism is called Brahman.
Zakir naik claims to be an expert on Hinduism and he doesn’t know this basic difference between Brahma and Brahman, something that even a novice Hinduism enthusiast would know. They are two entirely different ideas. Brahma is the creator aspect of God and is part of trinity while brahman is the all pervasive consciousness that gives light to every being and every entity. Thus Brahma is one of the form aspects of the formless Brahman and Brahman is omnipresent.
Zakir Naik’s lack of knowledge is evident in his speeches and his official website:
http://www.irf.net/Hindusm_concept_of_god.html
Truth is Brahma has no mention in the vedas, it is Brahman. AhamBrahmasmi – (I am one with Brahman) one of the 4 mahavakyas of Vedas refer to Brahman and not Brahma. One of the earliest mention of Brahma with Vishnu and Shiva is in the fifth Prapathaka (lesson) of the later book of Maitrayaniya Upanishad,
This is the ABC of Hindu philosophy. Seems Zakir Naik could only mug up the page numbers and verse numbers and couldn’t (or maliciously didn’t intend to) understand the hindu philosophy.
Let’s ignore this mistake to move further, he says this formless brahman is same as Zakir’s definition of allah, which again is entirely incorrect. There are two properties of Brahman which is not present in Zakir’s definition of Allah. They are – Brahman is infinite and Brahman is omnipresent.
We discussed above that truly formless has to be present everywhere and when something is present everywhere it is infinite.
Further we see many other distortions of Hindu texts by Zakir Naik:
In his speech and on his official website this is his explanation of a verse from Gita:
“Those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires surrender unto demigods and follow the particular rules and regulations of worship according to their own natures.”
[Bhagavad Gita 7:20]
The Gita states that people who are materialistic worship demigods i.e. ‘gods’ besides the True God.
Again we see distortion of Hindu scripture to serve personal propaganda:
What krishna actually stated was when one worships God with material desire they are not worshiping God as a whole but only an aspect of God. For example you want wealth, you worship God as provider of wealth, then you worship God as Kubera or Lakshmi. They are an aspect of that one God, Krishna says it is I who grant these worldly desires to man through these Gods. Krishna further states that people who worship me with desire only get till heaven and have to come back to earth. It is only when you love God without any desire. Love God for love’s sake, you attain moksha, total freedom and you become one with the infinite. That is the highest state according to Hinduism and not Heaven, and is unique to Hinduism.
In this light, when Zakir Naik promises Heaven and 72 virgins to believers, it is he who is promoting demiGod worship according to Gita according to Zakir’s own explanation.
Zakir Naik claims Hinduism preaches renouncing the world when he claims he has read Gita which is all about karma yoga. To stand in the middle of a fight like a yogi and win the war.
I can present umpteen examples where zakir naik has either covert intentions in presenting Hinduism or is plain ignorant. He is a religious supremacist whose only motivation in life is to prove others wrong. Surely he cannot be God’s voice. A person like that can only spew hate and disregard.
It is alarming that we didn’t get a scholarly rebuttal to Zakir Naik for years together and the reason is that Hindus, even the proclaimed scholars don’t have a good understanding of religion. Only armed with knowledge of our own scriptures can we fight these vultures who have degraded the highest truths of religion and spirituality into an evil game of cheating and conversion. The onus is upon us to be prepared