Are you feeding the Zakir Naik?

There is a famous Fable – Once an old Cherokee told his grandson, there’s a battle between two "wolves" inside us all. First is Evil. It is greed, anger, envy, jealousy, guilt, lies and ego. The second one is Good. It is hope, serenity, love, humility, kindness, truth and faith." The grandson asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" and the old Cherokee replied, "The one you feed."

We are always feeding a wolf, inside or outside, good or bad. It’s part of building character. That doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why good people focus on value system which is nothing but feeding the right wolf. The famous law of attraction works on the same principle whether you actually know the law or not.

Our lives are designed by the choices we make. It’s a combination of our belief system and situation. Its longevity depends upon the feeding habits. We meet the two wolves at every crossroad. When Gandhiji was thrown out of train in Africa, he found himself standing at one such crossroad. He chose to fight and that too without violence. That was his belief system (his wolf). Many people supported him and that gave him even more strength. He started to grow because of this feed. Later, he shifted to India feeding the same wolf and he found even more people feeding it. One day, India gained Independence from British Raj due to that feed. Who would have thought of winning the war of independence without fight?

Zakir Naik, another recent example. He started small as most people do. As his ideas and teachings gained popularity, it fed him to do more. His debates and lectures on Islam became very famous and popular. He touched upon many sensitive topics like terrorism, sex slavery, and suicide bombings etc. He didn’t see much objection; in fact his teachings were well supported. People started feeding the wolf. It gave him more courage and the wolf grew. It crossed the line a few times. However, he has been working hard feeding that wolf. Some countries didn’t like his preaching and even banned him and his channel. However, there is a saying “Work hard, you never know whom you are inspiring”. It won’t be a surprise if one of the Dhaka terrorists got inspired by one or more of his speeches in the wrong manner.

We live in information age. Many people spend a lot of time on social media. Facebook, twitter and whatsapp etc have become primary medium of information. Unfortunately, negativity sells. Social media posts hardly have any code of ethics. A negatively articulated link is 3-5 times more likely to catch attention and receive “likes” than positive news. Now, clicking a “like” on a negative article is also like feeding the wrong wolf. The person posting the content not only gets excited by the response, he is inspired to post more such content. Acknowledgement from a bunch of people goes a long way in making you a legend. The credit for success of so many faking news websites goes to our love for spicy and controversial news, it doesn’t matter if the content has nothing to do with reality. People just love reading it. In the process, they feed the bad wolf. Things have become so worse that even the real journalists have become biased. It’s really tempting and rewarding to feed the bad wolf these days.

Feeding the good wolf works equally well. A motivational quote could light up your day and the law of attraction is true for every case, no exceptions. However, I’m sure it’s details will bore you.

Silence is often taken as acceptance and we feed the bad wolf daily. A glaring example in India is crime against women. A crook commits the crime and no-one complains for fear of defamation. This amounts to feeding the bad wolf and that grows by the day. That’s why most criminals are repeat offenders because society helps them feed the wrong wolf. Ironically, every crime has its proponents. You may chant “vande mataram” and no-one will notice but if you shout anti-national slogans, you will be surprised to see approval and support coming from some corners. This public endorsement might instigate you to feed the wolf even more and the next moment, you will end up inspiring someone commit a “suicide attack”.

See the original Wordpress post here