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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Teen Men Age

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

Mehdi Hasan

You World Welcome

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Wedding Wishes Wish

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

Mehdi Hasan

You Using Us

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Wrong Within Wit

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Religion Zen Welfare

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

Mehdi Hasan

Health Virus Us

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Men Fear Zen

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

Mehdi Hasan

Ted T Right

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Religion Which Tribal

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

Mehdi Hasan

Want Void Try

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Teen Mom Men

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Art Age Who

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Work You Ways

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

Mehdi Hasan

Usual Us Try

There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Mehdi Hasan

Two Tin T

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.

Mehdi Hasan

War Truth Views

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

Mehdi Hasan

Year Why Who

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.

Mehdi Hasan

Work Politics Art

I am a believing and practising Muslim - but I am also a social democrat.

Mehdi Hasan

Us Tis T

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

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

You underestimate John Bolton at your peril.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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?

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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?

Mehdi Hasan

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.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

Shortly after he became the first Muslim to attend cabinet, I urged Sadiq Khan to be prepared. The Islamophobes, the new McCarthyites, would at some stage come after him. He laughed it off. Yet it was only a matter of time.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan

Deficit, deficit, deficit. The political and media elites are obsessed with the D-word.

Mehdi Hasan

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

Mehdi Hasan