Dr. Zakir Naik

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF. In 1991 he started working in the field of Dawah, and founded the IRF. Naik says he was inspired by Ahmed Deedat, an Islamic preacher, having met him in 1987.(Naik is sometimes referred to as "Deedat plus", a label given to him by Deedat himself.) Naik says that his goal is to "concentrate on the educated Muslim youth who have become apologetic about their own religion and have started to feel the religion is outdated." He considers it a duty of every Muslim to remove perceived misconceptions about Islam and to counter what he views as the Western media's anti-Islamic bias in the af