Dear Dr. Sohail Ahmed.

I had a chance to look at your mail to Ali Sina in which you have stated that Mr. Sina is 'afraid' of meeting Dr Naik. You have also stated that Ali Sina quotes the Quran out of context. If that is the case, can you please enlighten us as to what the 'correct' context is? Moreover you had stated that Dr ZN doesn't even quote scriptures belonging to other religions out of context and you referred to his lectures on 'SIMILARITIES BETWEEN HINDUISM AND ISLAM' and his verse from Bhagwad Gita on 'Jihad'.

I heard this lecture too. Let us analyze what Dr Zakir Naik had to say about Bhagwad Gita and Jihad.

He says that Shri Krishna implores Arjuna to fight against his cousins in the battle of Kurukshetra. Krishna also tells Arjuna that if he dies in the battle, he will go heaven and if he wins, he will enjoy the power on earth and this is exactly what Allah told to the Muslims during their battle against mushriks. Dr Naik also added that in the battle of Kurukshetra, Krishna asks Arjuna to fight a 'battle of Truth' the same way as Allah revealed to the Muslims through Muhammad to fight the 'battle of truth'. Then Dr Zakir Naik finally says "If today I say that Krishna asked Arjuna to kill his cousins, then I will be quoting the Gita out of context, right?" Wow what an analysis.

If you read the Mahabharat, you will see that the Pandavas and Kauravas were cousins. The Kauravas invited the Pandavas for a game of dice which the Kauravas won through deceit with the help of their uncle Shakuni. The Pandavas were humiliated and their wife, Draupadi, was disrobed in front of everybody. After the humiliation, the King Dritrashtra (father of Kauravas) gave back everything that the Pandavas lost fearing the curse of Draupadi. Now, again the Pandavas were invited for a game of dice for the second time which the Kauravas once again won through deceit. Now, the Pandavas were asked leave their kingdom and go to the forest for 14 years. Now, as per the agreement, the Pandavas, after 14 years, came back to their cousins claiming their kingdom. The Pandavas even sent Krishna as a messenger of peace. Kauravas ridiculed Krishna and told him that EVEN A NEEDLE POINT OF LAND will not be given when Krishna, on behalf of Pandavas, asked for just 5 villages and not even the whole kingdom. So THAT was when the war began when all doors of peace were totally shut. Whether this is historically true or not is not the point here. I have just presented the case as it is.

Now, if we see the battle against mushriks, there is no historical evidence (even in the Quran or the Hadiths) to prove that the kaafirs were the ones who broke the treaty between them and the Muslims. It was the Muslims who started the war. SO THEY WERE THE FIRST OFFENDERS. After entering in to Mecca, the Muslims gave 4 months time for all the non-Muslims to convert or else face the consequences (which meant paying an unreasonable tax called Jiziya or face death). It was during this war that Allah revealed verses that say 'Kill them where ever you find them'. But there were certain commonly agreed upon ethics for the war of Kurukshetra.

The two Supreme Commanders met and framed "rules of ethical conduct" for the war. The rules included:

1. Fighting must begin no earlier than sunrise and end exactly at sunset.

2. Multiple warriors may not attack a single warrior.

3. Two warriors may "duel," or engage in prolonged personal combat, only if they carry the same weapons and they are on the same mount (no mount, a horse, an elephant, or a chariot).

4. No warrior may kill or injure a warrior who has surrendered.

5. One who surrenders becomes a prisoner of war and a slave.

6. No warrior may kill or injure an unarmed warrior.

7. No warrior may kill or injure an unconscious warrior.

8. No warrior may kill or injure a person or animal not taking part in the war.

9. No warrior may kill or injure a warrior whose back is turned away.

10. No warrior may strike an animal not considered a direct threat.

11. The rules specific to each weapon must be followed. For example, it is prohibited to strike below the waist in mace warfare.

12. Warriors may not engage in any "unfair" warfare whatsoever.

* Note : This is a personal letter to refuse Dr Naik opinions or comments on Bhagavad Gita. He is the one of Ahmad Deedat's student in Comparative Religion field.

Gilgamesh was an historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River Euphrates in modern Iraq; he lived about 2700 B.C. Although historians (and your textbook) tend to emphasize Hammurabi and his code of law, the civilizations of the Tigris-Euphrates area, among the first civilizations, focus rather on Gilgamesh and the legends accruing around him to explain, as it were, themselves. Many stories and myths were written about Gilgamesh, some of which were written down about 2000 B.C. in the Sumerian language on clay tablets which still survive; the Sumerian language, as far as we know, bears no relation to any other human language we know about. These Sumerian Gilgamesh stories were integrated into a longer poem, versions of which survive not only in Akkadian (the Semitic language, related to Hebrew, spoken by the Babylonians) but also on tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite (an Indo-European language, a family of languages which includes Greek and English, spoken in Asia Minor). All the above languages were written in the script known as cuneiform, which means "wedge-shaped." The fullest surviving version, from which the summary here is taken, is derived from twelve stone tablets, in the Akkadian language, found in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria 669-633 B.C., at Nineveh. The library was destroyed by the Persians in 612 B.C., and all the tablets are damaged. The tablets actually name an author, which is extremely rare in the ancient world, for this particular version of the story: Shin-eqi-unninni. You are being introduced here to the oldest known human author we can name by name!

This summary is derived from several sources: translations, commentaries, and academic scholarship on the Shin-eqi-unninni tablets. Verses are derived from several English and French translations in consultation with the English and German language commentaries and with the Babylonian text. For the entire text, you should turn to The Epic of Gilgamesh , trans. by Maureen Gallery Kovacs (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), or Gilgamesh , translated by John Maier and John Gardner (New York: Vintage, 1981)

As you read this short summary, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Themes. The first things you want to sort out are the ideas which seem to animate the work. One of the problems with literature, art, mythology, etc., is that you can never be quite sure that you've correctly identified the central ideas or philosophy of the work, but you should take a stab at it anyway. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as one and only one idea in a work of literature, and that in most art and literature, like life, there is no one correct answer concerning any single issue. To identify an idea, question, or theme that the work seems to treat, look for specific places where that idea seems to be a concern; mark these passages and combine and contrast them when you begin to try to resolve what the work seems to be about. The questions I provide in these reading notes are meant to organize the families of questions you can bring to these texts.

2. Structure. Try to define for yourself the overall structure of the story. This narrative has two distinct parts; what are these parts and how are they separated? How do events in the second part of the narrative repeat or develop ideas in the first part of the narrative? Do these events contrast with or develop themes and values articulated in the first part of the narrative?

3. The Nature of the Heroic. When you read the myth, notice how Gilgamesh is presented as superhuman, so powerful that the gods create a counterpart to moderate his desires and actions. Do you get the sense that Gilgamesh and Enkidu should have spared the demon of the cedar forest? Despite all of Gilgamesh's power, he is unable to prevent Enkidu's death, and the narrative changes direction. How can one describe Gilgamesh as a hero in the last half of the work? What has he achieved at the end of the poem? Why is this important?

4. The Gods. The gods in Gilgamesh are a bit problematic. How do the gods behave? What is their relation to humans? How much freedom do humans have, or are they merely subject to the will of these gods?

5. The Flood. The story of the Flood is a familiar one, as we shall see in Genesis and Popol Vuh (Plato also gives an account of the Flood and the city of Atlantis in the dialogue, Critias ; the Nez Perce of the Palouse also have a flood story in which the only humans that survived did so by climbing the mountain, Yamustus, that is, Steptoe Butte). The earliest surviving reference to the Flood goes back to 1900 B.C. Why is it brought in here? Why do the gods bring on the Flood? Is any reason given? (Later compare the reasons for the floods in Genesis and Popol Vuh.) What does it tell us about the nature of history and the relation of the gods to humanity?