Mehdi Hasan

This article is about the British political editor. For the Pakistani singer, see Mehdi Hassan.

Mehdi Hasan is senior politics editor at the New Statesman and a former news and current affairs editor at Channel 4. At 29, Mehdi was the youngest editor in commissioning at Channel 4 and earned a nomination for the Royal TV Society Young Journalist of the Year Award.

Of Pakistani origin, Mehdi studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Christ Church College, Oxford University.

Appearances

He has made one appearance on the panel of Question Time.

He also appears fairly regularly on The Question hosted by Nicky Campbell on BBC on Sunday mornings.

He has given talks at several conferences and universities in the past, including at King's College London's ABsoc.

Allegations of Religious Extremism

Hasan caused some controversy in 2009, when he was recorded telling his audience at the al-Khoei foundation that non-Muslims were ignorant cattle:

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”

he was also criticised for presenting, and dividing, the world in very stark and simplistic religious terms. In the same speech he appeared only able to define people by what religion they were:

“It is no surprise that when we look at the Muslim world, you see that we 1.2 billion Muslims we have won just 10 nobel prizes to our name. Nobel prizes in whatever it is; economics, physics, literature etc. We have ten to our name despite the fact that we are 1.2 billion Muslims. Our Jewish brethren who we spend so much time fighting and arguing with: 12 million Jews in the world and 150 nobel prizes to their name. All Israel’s top 6 universities feature in the top 200 universities on earth – none of the Muslim world’s top universities feature in top 100 or 200 universities in the world and then we wonder why we are losing battles – we are not being out-fought we are being out-thought. We are not underarmed. We are undereducated.”

Support for Iranian Regime Apologists

As political editor of the New Statesman, Hasan has employed Darius Guppy who, during the Iranian regime's brutal supression of protesters in Tehran wrote in the Independent supporting the regime.

External links

• [1] - Hasan's New Statesman blog
• [2] - Biography of Hasan's media career.
• http://hurryupharry.org/2009/07/24/medhi-hasan-exposed-part-i-%E2%80%93-atheists-and-disbelievers-are-%E2%80%9Ccattle%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cof-no-intelligence%E2%80%9D/
• http://hurryupharry.org/2009/07/27/mehdi-hasan-part-ii-muslims-and-non-muslims/