Top 76 Quotes & Sayings by Mehdi Hasan

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

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.

The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been a disaster for the public image of Islam - and a boon for the Islamophobia industry.

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.

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?

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.

You underestimate John Bolton at your peril.

Islam, for example, like so many other faiths, stresses the importance of mutual solidarity with our fellow man.

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.

Why shouldn't 16-year-olds who pay taxes and drive not be allowed to vote?

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?

There are two Tory parties: the trendy, socially liberal Notting Hill set which dominates at the national level, and the unreconstructed, reactionary, and often bigoted members of Conservative associations at the local level. The latter have yet to reconcile themselves to the reality of modern, multiracial Britain.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

What we want is responsible journalism. We want to avoid bigotry.

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.

There is very little chance of the modern Republican Party putting the national interest above their own partisan interests.

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.

I will call out someone if he's Islamophobic, and I will also call out anti-Semitism. It's immoral to call out one and not the other.

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.

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

I'm a fan of robust debate, and I'm not averse to engaging in the odd ad hominem attack myself.

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

To pretend that there is no such thing as the Muslim world is specious, self-deluding, and - frankly - plain silly.

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.

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.

Let's be clear: There is no doubt that the citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea both fear and loathe the United States. Paranoia, resentment, and a crude anti-Americanism have been nurtured inside the Hermit Kingdom for decades.

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.

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.

Always remember: You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. In the case of support for Donald Trump, the results are in: It isn't the economy. It's the racism, stupid.

It isn't only Republicans, it seems, who traffic in alternative facts. Since Donald Trump's shock election victory, leading Democrats have worked hard to convince themselves, and the rest of us, that his triumph had less to do with racism and much more to do with economic anxiety - despite almost all of the available evidence suggesting otherwise.

There's a general ignorance about how Muslims live and what Muslims believe.

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.

Are we willing and able to stand up to Islamophobia on days when there are not brutal terrorist attacks on Muslims in mosques?

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

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.

I'm the first person to say don't equate between terrorism and Islam. But at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that there isn't a threat from some British Muslim homegrown extremists.

Lampooning racism by reproducing brazenly racist imagery is a pretty dubious satirical tactic.

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.

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.

Bigotry and demonisation of difference are usually the hallmark of immature and childish minds.

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

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.

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.

I love my job... but I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media. I get pretty exhausted of having to constantly endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations, and often inaccurate and baseless stories.

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.

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.

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

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.

To be clear, no one is saying there weren't any legitimate economic grievances in Trumpland, nor is anyone claiming that the economy played no role whatsoever. The point, however, is that it wasn't the major motivating factor for most Trump voters - or, at least, that's what we learn when we bother to study those voters. Race trumped economics.

Even as evidence mounts that immigration is bolstering the British economy, the political consensus seems to be that bashing immigration boosts electoral fortunes.

The reality is that far-right extremism is no longer dominated by loners.

Proportional representation is as British as first-past-the-post.

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

Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.

Scepticism may be evidence of a healthy and independent mindset; but conspiracism is a virus that feeds off insecurity and bitterness.