Mehdi Hasan

Quotes by Mehdi Hasan

• From a moral point of view, it is wrong... to smear or stereotype minority communities, to pretend or give credence to the idea that the actions of a minority within a community are somehow representative or the fault of the majority of members of that community. That is the very definition of bigotry.

  Read quote

• I was 13 years old when I first heard of the Sultan of Brunei. The absolute ruler of a tiny, oil-rich kingdom in Southeast Asia, Hassanal Bolkiah was the subject of a much-discussed TV documentary by the British filmmaker Alan Whicker in 1992. As a young teenager, sitting in front of the television, I was in awe of this Muslim king.

  Read quote

• The common stereotype of the Middle Eastern, Muslim-born terrorist is not just lazy and inaccurate but easy fodder for the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam far right.

  Read quote

• Every morning, I take a deep breath and then go online to discover what new insult or smear has been thrown in my direction. Whether it's tweets, blogposts or comment threads, the abuse is as relentless as it is vicious.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• Most Asians I know still don't trust the Tories on race - and they have good reason not to.

  Read quote

• Religion is simply one of a multitude of factors - economic political, cultural, social, tribal, racial - which shape and drive human action and reaction and often is the least important of those factors.

  Read quote

• It is man - whether believer or non-believer - who is responsible for global unrest. And it is human beings who have to learn to co-exist in the 21st century, outside of divisive social constructs, religious or otherwise.

  Read quote

• To claim that ISIS is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• The French elites' strategy of trying to defeat the Le Pens by aping their rhetoric, stealing their policies, and pandering to their voters has been a political and moral failure.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• As a supporter of secularism, I am willing to accept same-sex weddings in a state-sanctioned register office, on grounds of equity. As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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?

  Read quote