Khushwant Singh, a prominent Indian journalist, politician and author argues that Naik's pronouncements are "juvenile" and said that "they seldom rise above the level of undergraduate college debates, where contestants vie with each other to score brownie points".
Singh replied to Zakir Naik's statement that "Western society claims to have uplifted women. On the contrary, it has actually degraded them to the status of concubines, mistresses, and society butterflies who are mere tools in the hands of pleasure seekers and sex marketers…." by saying "Dr. Naik, you know next to nothing about the Western society and are talking through your skull cap. People like you are making the Muslims lag behind other communities." Singh also noted that Naik's audiences "... listen to him with rapt attention and often explode in enthusiastic applause when he rubbishes other religious texts ..."
Lucknow based cleric Kalbe Jawad argued that "Naik is bringing a bad name to Muslims. Such people should be condemned and socially boycotted" and claimed that Naik was being financed by the Wahabi sect that supposedly perpetrates violence in the name of Islam and expressed the need for an inquiry into, how Naik was running a TV channel on his own and where he received the funds from. Another Lucknow cleric Naib Imam Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangi Mahali claimed that Naik has "mugged up some verses from the Koran and pretends to be an Islamic scholar".
