Analysing Zakir Naik’s Illocutionary Acts in His Speech about Islam’s View on Terrorism & Jihad

Zakir Naik is an infamous Indian preacher who conveys the meaning of Qur’anic verses on today’s social media, primarily using English to reach the widest international audience. The study aims to find out the dominant types of illocutionary acts and functions of speech acts in his speech on terrorism and jihad in Islam’s perspective. This mixed method study uses quantitative and qualitative data from his lecture on “Islam and Jihad”, analysing the data with Searle’s (1986) speech act theory. This study contributes to the pool of linguistics knowledge on the delivery of sensitive topics by detailing how an English as a second language (ESL) speaker conveys religious beliefs to the world.