Mehdi Hasan and the Islamist religious right

In 2013 Mehdi Hasan was outraged at being referenced as “from the Islamist religious right” in an article by Nick Cohen. However Hasan has since shifted to the US working with Al Jazeera and Cohen’s statement has looked ever increasingly vindicated.

Ad for an event from the ISNA
Striving  for Justice Conference
Tour last November featuring
Hasan alongside Jamal Badawi,
Zahra Billoo and Hussain Kalami

Whilst in the US, Hasan has moved ever further into the North American Islamist speaking circuit. The latest series events he’s been attending being the ISNA “Striving for Justice Conference Tour”, where Hasan has been a featured speaker at the past two events in November and December, and is advertised to also be speaking at another one in February.

The ISNA “Striving for Justice Tour” has throughout the year featured some of the best known Islamists in North America, the stop in June featured Suhaib Webb, Dalia Mogahed and Hatem al Haj, the one in April featured Omar Suleiman and Yasir Qadhi, both instructors from the notoriously ultra-hardline Al Maghrib Institute, whilst the one in February featured Siraj Wahhaj.

All these ISNA events feature a lot of Islamists, and those that Hasan has starred at have been no exception.

Alongside Hasan sharing a platform with him at the event in November was Zahra Billoo, Executive Director of CAIR-SFBA, who has openly tweeted support for the Muslim Brotherhood and feed is otherwise filled with raging anti-US and anti-“Zionist” tweets.

For example, Billoo says the “the CIA is a terrorist organisation”, equates US troops with ISIS and Al Qaeda, and Barack Obama with the Taliban, has caused controversy for annually each Memorial Day abusing US troops, and written that “it would obviously be a generalization to say all of the troops are scum, but it might be one that I could make without feeling guilty”. She’s also called Thanksgiving Day “Genocide/Rape & Pillage Thankstaking Day”, and posted links saying celebrating Columbus Day was “the same as having Jews celebrate Hitler and the Holocaust”.

She also is of course fond of equating “apartheid” Israel with ISIS too, and even says “I'm more afraid of racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel than of the mentally ill young people the #FBI recruits to join ISIS”. She also sympathises with Hamas terrorism which according to her criticism of is equivalent to “blaming a woman for punching her rapist”.

On her blog she approvingly quoted Yusuf Qaradawi stating “it is the duty” of all Muslims to help the Palestinians “whether by donating money, giving weapons, sending fighters, or boycotting the goods of Israel”, stated that “to raise fighters” to attack Israel was an “amazing” reason to get married, posted pictures of children wearing a Palestinian Islamic Jihad bandana (photo is titled “hamasgirl”), and also proudly announced her “lil’ brother” was quoted in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal expressing justification for suicide bombing in Palestine and enthusiastically told readers to “check it out”. She has also posted the work of anti-Semitic cartoonist Khalil Bendib about “The Israel Lobby” (a cartoon that went down well on Stormfront too).

Furthermore, she praises both  CAGE and the Khomeinist IHRC, and is a supporter of Aafia Siddiqui, also known as “Lady Al Qaeda” and serving an 86 year sentence for an attempted terror attack, asking “where is the outcry?” over her sentencing and forwarding articles from CAGE titled “Aafia […] needs your support”. Others she supports include the Holy Land Five, serving sentences of between 15 to 65 years for “funnelling $12m to Hamas”, and who Billoo calls “personal heroes”, “longstanding humanitarians, activists, friends, husbands and fathers”, that she’s “praying for them” and wishes Allah “grant them freedom and victory”.

Also speaking at the event was Jamal Badawi, a veteran Islamist who has praised Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna as “inspirational” and possesses a long track record of expressing theocratic beliefs such as stating his belief in Islam’s superiority to “man-made law”, repeatedly speaking in support of Palestinian terrorism.

The other advertised featured speaker was Mufti Hussain Kalami of the Qalam Institute, who sermonises about being “surrounded by filth” in Western society, those who commit adultery must be “stoned to death”, and offers a condemnation of domestic violence by saying the permissibility of beating a wife is only a “last measure”. He also posts on social media asking Allah “to reward the martyrs of Palestine”, and published a pamphlet at the Qalam Institute titled “The Prophetic Code” with lines instructing Muslims “do not resemble the Jews”.

Video: Recording of some of Hussain Kalami's controversial views

Both the other ISNA events Hasan is attending are little different. One of the other speakers advertised alongside Hasan for both the events in December and February is Muzammil Siddiqi, another veteran Islamist with a long track record of espousing theocratic views, having written that “we must not forget that Allah's rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction”, and of his desire to see “the implementation of Sharia in all areas”. Also advertised to speak at the event in February is Siraj Wahhaj, a well-known Islamist with many extreme views and listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Hasan at a CAIR event

These events are far from the first occasions Hasan has appeared among this sort of company at these types of events. He’s been a keynote speaker at the annual banquets of a handful of CAIR chapters, and for three years running spoken at the ISNA Annual Convention, an event brimming with renowned Islamists (Yasir Qadhi and Tariq Ramadan were featured as main event speakers this year).

Attending events from organisations with dubious histories and reputations alongside various figures known to have bigoted views from the Islamist religious right could be excusable if those views were being singled out and robustly challenged. But that clearly does not appear to the case; in fact it seems the opposite happens and Hasan ends up praising both the organisation and the people at the event.

Just to take Billoo as an example, who Hasan has spoken alongside on a handful of occasions at such events, and at one of which they both took to Twitter afterwards to praise and congratulate each other on their speeches.

On another occasion where both Billoo and Hasan were featured on a panel event at the 2014 ISNA convention, Hasan rounded off the session motivational speech style lavishing praise not only upon his fellow panellists (which not only included Billoo but others of similar ilk, such as former MSA Presidents who tweet stuff like “Holocaust was horrific. can't fathom how nation could inflict same pain on others. Abused become abuser? Bullied becomes bully?”), but the people at those sort of CAIR or ISNA events more generally.

“If you look what is happening in the British media now with British Muslims, if you look what’s happening in the United States now, I think there are massive signs of positivity. […] We have an Imam, we have a civil rights activist from CAIR, we have a scholar and activist here. I would say, look at these three people on stage. I go to Muslim conferences across America now, this is my fifth one of 2014, I am absolutely inspired and energised by the people I meet. […] I go back to the UK and say I’m inspired. That’s positive. Let’s stop talking about the clichéd example of the bad Muslim community leader. Let’s look at some of the leaders and activists we have now, some of whom are on this stage, and say you know what, we’re in a good place right now.”

Video: On a platform with Zahra Billoo, Hasan offers effusive praise for

both her and the "leaders and activists" at CAIR/ISNA events more generally. 

Just as a reminder, this was an ISNA convention packed with Islamist speakers, including all of the likes of Jamal Badawi, Siraj Wahhaj, Muzammil Siddiqi, plus Al Maghrib Instructors such as Omar Suleiman and Yasir Qadhi. In fact Qadhi, who has expressed many vile views and conspiracy theories, was the most prominently advertised speaker featuring in seven different sessions (one of which was actually alongside Hasan titled “Responding to Neo-Atheism”).

Hasan has allied with Al Maghrib's Yasir Qadhi in "taking on" so called "new atheism" at ISNA conventions.

Yet Hasan praised for ISNA for putting on an “amazing” range of sessions and said he’s “absolutely inspired and energised” by the people at such events. As well as offering warm words for people like Zahra Billoo, who as mentioned before is, among many things, a big fan of CAGE and wants to know where the “outcry” is over Aafia Siddiqui, accuses Barack Obama of committing “comparable crimes” to the Taliban, frequently compares Israel to ISIS, whose “personal heroes” are the Holy Land Five, and is highly sympathetic to Palestinian terrorism. According to Hasan that’s the sort of “activist” he looks at and sees as evidence that “we’re in a good place right now”.

Meanwhile Hasan’s Twitter feed also does little to rebut the notion he’s friendly with the Islamist religious right.

Among the accounts Hasan most frequently interacts with and retweets include the likes of CAIR-AZ Executive Director Imraan Siddiqi, who uses the term “zio”, terms people of Muslim background he dislikes “native informants”, and is another supporter of the Holy Land Five who he claims were on the receiving end of the “political lynching of our time” and petitions for the release of Ghassan Elashi (serving 65 years in jail for financing Hamas), plus an enthusiastic fan and promoter of Islamists such as Yasir Qadhi or Abdul Nasir Jangda of the Al Maghrib Institute. Or his Al Jazeera colleague Sana Saeed, another fan of Al Maghrib Instructors, another user of the term “zio”, and also someone who terms women of Muslim background she doesn’t like as “native informant feminists”.

A lot of his feed is also dedicated to retweeting journalists or news outlets from the far-left, Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain (who notably called Maajid Nawaz a “native informing porch monkey”) at the The Intercept are among Hasan’s most prolifically retweeted outlets, whilst even long disgraced liar and serial plagiarist CJ Werleman (who calls Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Nawaz “brown-faced white masked conduits” to “white supremacists like Harris/Dawkins”) is a regular on his timeline.

Hasan dislikes and picks battles with many of the same people as they all do, and likewise shares their proclivity to delve deep into the gutter in order to attack them, forwarding almost anything anywhere negative on them.

Possibly the ugliest example of this coming last August when Hasan retweeted, along with Greenwald, an anti-Semitic attack piece on journalist Michael Weiss which likened him to a “medieval court Jew” who “does the bidding of oligarch and the powerful” which was published by an extreme far right anti-Semitic site called The UNZ Review. Among other articles published by The UNZ Review include “Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump” (by Kevin MacDonald), “The Rise of the Jewish Policy Elite”, “Genetics & the Jews”, “The Origin of Ashkenazi Jews Near Resolution”, plus “Pol Pot Revisited” and “It’s time to Re-think David Duke” (yes, seriously).

The crank who authored the attack on Weiss was quite thrilled at Hasan retweeting his work, and took a break from maniacally tweeting about “zios” and the “zio-mafia” to thank him for his “courage”.

As a sidenote that site is a good example of political horseshoe by the way, as it has been simultaneously forwarded by alt-right types (Milo Yiannopolous even mentioned it in his “guide to the alt-right”), whilst articles with titles such as “How the Israel Lobby Works” or “Israel’s propaganda machine is finally starting to misfire” get forwarded by people such as Hasan’s friends Billoo or Siddiqi.

Another frequent target of vitriol is of course Maajid Nawaz, one of the latest examples coming with the SPLC’s disgraceful “anti-Muslim extremist” list, where Hasan jubilantly gloated at his inclusion, accusing him of “encouraging Islamophobia”, and retweeted several others celebrating it.

Ad for a series of MEND
fundraising events in May
which Hasan headlined.

He’s also been forwarding various of the “Preventing Prevent” lobby’s work over the past couple months or so, including Guardian articles from a renowned Islamist like Tariq Ramadan (who has also been busy in the UK recently promoting CAGE) or officials from the controversial Muslim Council of Britain. He’s also headlined speaking events for fund raisers for the toxic Islamist group MEND this year, and has been retweeting them too lately. One wonders if those are the sort of articles and activists he was referencing as the “massive signs of positivity” in the British media in his ISNA speech.

Hasan has self-identified in the past as a “progressive”, however that claim is dubious given he has been exposed writing sycophantic letters to the Daily Mail in praise of their social conservatism, plus of course also been recorded preaching religiosity maniacally and ranting about atheists and cattle. Stuff that are generally more expected from someone from the religious right.

He has also said in the past he “believes in secular society”, but many of the people at those CAIR or ISNA events he’s been at do not share that view. Regulars at CAIR or ISNA events such as people like Suhaib Webb (“secularism is a radical, lunatic ideology”), Zahra Billoo (we “will not renounce jihad, khilafah or sharia”), or Al Maghrib instructors like Omar Suleiman (“we ask Allah to allow us to witness a righteous khilafah”), along with veteran Islamists like Jamal Badawi (who’s been saying such things for decades).

At the very least, belief in a secular society does not seem to be a deal breaker for Hasan (maybe he shares MEND’s view that non-violent Islamists should be brought back from “beyond the pale”?), considering how he so often praises the likes of Webb and Billoo, or organisations such as CAIR, ISNA or MEND, all who have contempt for secular activists (either Muslim or non-Muslim) campaigning against Islamism. Yet Hasan reliably sides with them and even seemingly shares much of that disdain.

Hasan’s most emphatic endorsements are reserved for someone like Dalia Mogahed, another regular on the circuit of CAIR, ISNA or also the even more hardline ICNA events, known for defending theocracy on a chat show with Hizb ut-Tahrir, and recently joined as a board member of an Islamist think tank newly founded by Al Maghrib’s Omar Suleiman (others on the board include people like Tariq Ramadan, renowned anti-Semite and friend of Press TV Hatem Bazian, Hatem al Haj – who issues fatwas ruling the penalty for apostasy is death, and Daniel Haqiqatjou – who wants to persuade us lashing or stoning people for zina is not barbaric or irrational). Whereas energy for his most frequent and vitriolic attacks is devoted to people such as Maajid Nawaz and Prevent, or so called “new atheists” such as Sam Harris or Sarah Haider (who Hasan gave an approving nod to Sana Saeed calling a “racist brown ex-Muslim/rabid new atheist”).

Two and a half years ago around the time he was first delving into the Islamist speaking circuit with CAIR, an article from the excellent blog Jacobinism speculated that he may be moving to the US and wrote of how an “intelligent and eloquent dissembler like Hasan would prove extremely valuable to CAIR” and no doubt “have highly agreeable things to say on the subjects of Israel, American foreign policy, and the desirability of using the term 'Islamophobia' as promiscuously as possible”.

Whilst he may not be involved directly with CAIR, that is otherwise a pretty accurate summary of how things have actually turned out with him becoming more prominent on the Islamist speaking circuit with either them or ISNA, plus headlining fund raising events for MEND on returns to the UK.

Those organisations are from the Islamist religious right, and whether or not he subscribes to all their views, it’s not unfair to point out Hasan has been involved with and supported them all, and that he seems to find much more in common with those circles than any secular liberal Muslim activists (or “native informants” as some of Hasan’s friends would likely refer to them as).