Mehdi Hasan Quotes

Homophobia is not the monopoly of any one country, culture, or religion.

The moment has come, as we enter the teenies, to forget the idea of a Palestinian state existing side by side with a Jewish state, and to argue and agitate instead for the only remaining, viable and democratic option: a single, secular and binational state for Israelis and Palestinians.

Stop treating Muslims as if they’re some kind of foreign, alien entity rather than part of the fabric of Canadian society or American society or British society.

I think that the anti-Semitic problem in the British Muslim community is worse than among the community at large.

The public is to the left not simply of New Labour, but the political and media classes as a whole.

If you‘re gay, that doesn’t mean I want to discriminate against you, belittle or bully you, abuse or offend you. Not at all. I don’t want to go back to the dark days of criminalisation and the imprisonment of gay men and women; of Section 28 and legalised discrimination.

Social media has emboldened an army of online Islamophobes; in the real world, mosques have been firebombed and politicians line up to condemn Muslim terrorism/clothing/meat/seating arrangements.

Have you ever been called an Islamist? How about a jihadist or a terrorist? Extremist, maybe? Welcome to my world. It’s pretty depressing.

Perhaps the biggest boost to the LePenization of French politics came from Nicolas Sarkozy. As president of France between 2007 and 2012, he actively courted FN voters and helped dismantle the ‘Republican pact,’ under which the two main parties had pledged to work together to defeat the FN at a national and local level.

Some have argued that the United States was designed to block majority rule; to be a ‘republic, not a democracy.’ This is ahistorical nonsense.

We have to find a way to try and reconcile our beliefs – and Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, has traditionally seen homosexuality as a sin – with the reality of life in modern, pluralistic, secular societies in which gay people cannot be wished away or banished from sight.

I have always regretted the dumb and offensive comments I made in my 20s on atheism and homosexuality.

It is worth noting that Steve King of Iowa is far from the only Republican member of Congress to offer cover to white nationalists.

You underestimate John Bolton at your peril.

When you demonize Muslims as a community, as an entire group of people based on the crimes or actions of a tiny minority within that community, you have very worrying, real world effects.

The reality is that religion, across the board, and in and of itself, neither provokes war nor promotes peace – and it is childish and naive, not to mention utopian, to believe otherwise.

The state exists to serve and protect every citizen, regardless of colour, creed, race or religion – and the welfare state should exist to and protect the populace in the same non-discriminatory and universal manner.

The inconvenient truth that our lazy media elites do so much to ignore is that Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Warren are much closer in their views to the vast majority of ordinary Americans than the Bloombergs or the Bidens. They are the true centrists, the real moderates; they represent the actual political middle.

Anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace.

How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs – 635,000 tons – and napalm – 32,557 tons – than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?

To speak of the Muslim world is not to endorse a totalitarian project, nor to bolster an Islamist narrative, nor to suggest that variety, plurality, and diversity are lacking in what Muslims think, believe, speak, and do as Muslims.

Like Obama before him, Trump will escalate in Afghanistan. Like Obama before him, Trump will lose in Afghanistan. And the rest of us, shamefully, will continue to look the other way.

Republicans don’t give a damn about anti-Semitism. They just don’t care.

In theory, the filibuster helps whichever party is in the minority in the Senate. In practice, it is the Republicans who have disproportionately used it to engage in cynical and anti-democratic obstructionism whenever they find themselves in the minority.

Billionaires and corporations buy and sell politicians, while citizens struggle to exercise their right to vote or hold their elected representatives to account.

How is it that labels like ‘centrist‘ and ‘moderate,’ which common sense tells us should reflect the views of a majority of Americans, have come to be applied to those who represent minority interests and opinions?

Orthodox Islam, like orthodox interpretations of the other Abrahamic faiths, views homosexuality as sinful and usually defines marriage as only ever a heterosexual union. This isn’t to say that there is no debate on the subject.

There are no authentic reports in any of the Muslim books of history of the Prophet Muhammad punishing anyone for same-sex acts.

Let’s start with the euro. What on earth were we thinking? How could anyone with the faintest grasp of economics have believed it was anything other than sheer insanity to yoke together diverse national economies such as Greece, Ireland, Germany and Finland under a single exchange rate and a single interest rate?

You cannot appease fascism by meeting it in the middle; you cannot beat racism by indulging or excusing it.

One of the hardiest myths in British public life is that there is a conspiracy of silence on immigration. Liberals and leftists, it is alleged, have bandied together to prevent debate or discussion of ‘mass immigration’ into the U.K., caused by Labour’s ‘open door‘ policies.

None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech. We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.

The terrorists may want to try and legitimize their violence by cynically appealing to Islamic motifs or doctrines, but there is no reason the rest of us should help them do it.