Mehdi Hasan | Islam Is A Peaceful Religion | Oxford Union

thank you very much mr. president ladies and gentlemen good evening assalamualaikum lovely to see you all here tonight we are having a very entertaining night are we not with some very interesting things being said from the other side of the house tonight let me begin by saying as a Muslim as a representative of Islam I would consider myself an ambassador for Islam a believer in Islam a follower of Islam and its prophet so in that capacity let me begin by apologizing to anne-marie for the Bali bombings I apologize for the role of my religion and me and my people for the killing of theo van gogh for 7/7 yes that was all of us that was Islam that was Muslims that was the Quran I mean astonishing astonishing claims to make in the very first speech not on a day like today where the conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is having to come out and point out that these kind of views are anathema and I believe you're trying to stand for the Labor Party to become an MP in Brighton if you do and you make these comments I'm guessing you'll have the wit withdrawn from you but then again you Kipps on the rise they'll take you the BNP they might have something to say about your views away away by the way thanks by the way by the way sort of factual points as we heard a lot about the second speaker about backward we Muslims all are on a factual point you said that Islam was born in Saudi Arabia Islam was born in 610 ad Saudi Arabia was born in 1932 ad so you were only 1300 of 22 years off not bad not bad start they're talking of maths by the way a man named hour is me with one of the greatest mathematicians of all time a Muslim worked in the Golden Age of Islam he's the guy who came up with not just algebra but algorithms without algorithms you wouldn't have laptops without laptops Daniel Johnson tonight wouldn't been able to print out his speech in which he came to berate as Muslims for holding back the advance and intellectual achievements of the West which all happened without any contribution from anyone else other than the judeo-christian people of Europe in fact Daniel David levering the author of the Pulitzer prize-winning historian and author of the golden crucible pointer that there would be no Renaissance there would be no Reformation in Europe without the role played by even a sinner and even though Roche than some of the great Muslim theologians philosopher scientist in bringing peace to Europe as for this being our University I will leave that to the imagination as to who is our and who is there I studied here to an astonishing astonishing set of speeches so far making this case tonight a mixture of just cherry-picked quotes facts and figures self-serving selectively a farrago of distortions misrepresentations misinterpretations miss quotations Daniel talked about my article in the New Statesman which got me a lot of flack where I talked about the anti-semitism that is prevalent in some parts of the Muslim community which indeed it is of course I didn't say in that piece that it was caused by the religion of Islam in fact modern anti-semitism in the Middle East was imported from finish the sentence Christian Judeo Christian Europe where I believe some certain bad things happen to the Jewish people in fact Tom Friedman Jewish American columnist in New York Times told me in this very chamber last week that he believed had Muslims been running Europe in the 1940s six million extra Jews would still be alive today so I'm not going to take lessons in anti-semitism from someone who's here to defend the judeo-christian values of a continent of murder of six million Jews moving swiftly on moving swiftly on yes absolutely well I'm about to read a point no no no I'm about to make the point you're right I agree with you I agree with you I agree with you 110% that is my point I don't think Europe is evil or bad I'm a very proud European I don't want to judge Europe on the basis but if we're going to play this gutter game where we pull out the barley bombing and we pull out examples of anti-semitism this lymangood then of course I'm going to come back and say well hold on I mean look let's be very clear Daniel here was a last minute replacement for Douglas Murray who had to pull out and Douglas and I have a well-documented differences but to be fair to Douglas has to be fair to anne-marie and to Peter atheists atheists see all religions as evil violent threatening what the problem I have with Daniel speech is that Daniel comes here to wrap this robust defense of Christianity forgetting that his fellow Christians people who said they were acting in the name of Jesus gave us the Crusades the Spanish Inquisition the anti-jewish pogroms European colonialism in Africa and Asia the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda not to mention countless arson and bomb attacks on abortion clinics in the United States of America to this very day I would like a little bit of humility from Daniel first before he begins lecturing other communities and other faiths on violent terror and intolerance but no thank you but I would say this to address the gentleman's very valid point here I'm not going to play that game I don't actually believe that Christianity is a religion of violence and hate because of what the LRA does in Uganda or what what Crusaders did to Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem and they took back the city in the 12th or 13th whatever century it was I believe that Christianity like Islam like pretty much every mainstream religion is based on love and compassion and faith I do follow a religion in which hundred and thirteen out of 114 chapters of the Quran begins by introducing the God of Islam as a God of mercy and compassion I would not have it any other way I don't follow a religion which introduces my God to me as a God of War as some kind of Greek god of Wrath as a God of hate and injustice not at all as Adam pointed out you go through the Quran and you see the mercy and the love and the justice and yes you have verses that refer to warfare and violence of course it does this is non emotion about pacifism and I'm not here to argue that Islam is a pacifistic faith it is not Islam allows military action violence in certain limited contexts and yet a minority of Muslims do take it out of that context but is it religious we talked about Willich Daniel and anne-marie have suggested that it's definitely religion that's behind all of this well actually what I find so amusing tonight is we're having a debate about Islam and the opposition tonight have come forward we have a graduate in law or graduate in modern history a graduate in chemistry and you know I admire all of their intellects and their abilities but we don't have anyone who is actually an expert on Islam a scholar of Islam a historian of Islam a speaker of Arabic even a terrorism expert or a security expert or a pollster let alone to talk about what Muslims believe or think instead we have people coming here putting forward these views putting forward these sweeping opinions listen to Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago one of America's leading terrorism experts who unlike our esteemed opposition tonight studied every single case of suicide terrorism between 1980 and 2005 315 cases in total and he concluded and I quote there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism or any of the world's religions rather what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific a killer and strategic goal to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists considered to be their homeland and the irony is when we talk about terrorism the irony is that the opposition and the Muslim terrorists the al-qaida types actually have one thing in common because they both believe that Islam is a warlike violent religion they both agree on that they have everything in common Osama bin Laden would be nodding along to everything is earth to know from the opposition that he agrees with them the problem is the problem is that mainstream Muslims don't the majority of Muslims around the world don't in fact a gentle Nick I started quoting all sorts of polls Gallup carried out the biggest poll of Muslims around all of 35,000 fifty thousand Muslims in 35 countries 93% of Muslims rejected 9/11 and suicide attacks one of the 7% who didn't they all when pulled and focus groups cited political reasons for their support for violence not religious reasons and asked for Islamic scholars and what they say well Daniel talks about our University of Oxford we'll go down to Oxford Center for Islamic studies get hold of a man named Sheikh Afifi Alec ET who is a massively well credentialed and well-respected Islamic scholar who has studied across the world who in the days after 77 published the fact were denouncing terrorism in the name of Islam calling for the protection of all non-combatants at all times and describing suicide bombings as an innovation with no basis in Islamic law go and listen to shake the adult ivory one of Pakistan's most famous Islamic scholars who published a 600 page fatwa condemning the killing of all innocence and all suicide bombings unconditionally without any ifs or buts there's nothing new here this is mainstream Islam mainstream scholarship we just said this for years you don't go out and kill people willy-nilly in the high street or anywhere else on a bus or a mall based on verses of the Quran that you cherry-pick without any context any understanding any interpretation or any commentary please well it's I didn't say it doesn't happen at all I never said it didn't happen I don't blame his son yes it's a very good point and a lot of us a lot of us are campaigning against that and we're campaigning against it in the name of Islam we're campaigning against in the name of various interpretations of Islam and Marie comes and scares us with her talk of Sharia law I would like to see the book of Sharia law it doesn't exist people argue over what Sharia law is and you empower the extremists by saying there is only one version you empower them all I don't believe you took any interruptions Amory so I think you should stay there for a moment here's here's what we're dealing with say that we're dealing with we are dealing I took your point I take your point here we are dealing with a 1400 year old global religion followed by 1.6 billion people in every corner of the world a quarter of humanity of all backgrounds cultures ethnicities and yet the opposition tonight wants to generalize stereotype smear in order to desperately win this debate and here's my question if we're going to generalize and smear if okay people say yesterday's bombers and we've got to be careful there's a trial going on where yesterday's attacker sorry motivated by is our big debate I don't believe they were let's say they were let's say Faisal Shahzad the Time Square bomber was motivated by Islam let's assume for sake of argument that Richard Reid the shoe bomber was in Israel if Islam is responsible for these killers if Islam is what is motivating these people and Islam is therefore not a religion of peace of religion war then ask yourself this question why aren't the rest of us doing it why is it such a tiny minority of Muslims are interpreting their religion in the way that the opposition claim they are let's assume there are 16,000 suicide bombers in the world there aren't let's assume there are for the sake of argument that's 0.001 percent of the Muslim population globally what about the other 99.99% of Muslims who the opposition tonight either ignore or smear the reality is that the rest of us aren't blowing ourselves up tonight the reality is that the opposition came here tonight not worried about the fact that me and Adam might pull open our jacket to blow ourselves up today because we're followers of a warlike warrior religion which wants to take over Europe and Daniels University the issue is this the opposition can tell us tonight and Peter Atkins is here one of our great atheist intellectuals can tell us tonight can they can answer this question tonight well I doubt the vast majority of Muslims around the world behave as violently and aggressively as a tiny minority of politically motivated extremists then they might as well give up and stop pretending they have anything relevant to say about Islam or Muslims as a whole ladies in German let me just say this to you think about what the opposite of this motion is if you vote no tonight think about what you're saying the opposite emotion is that Islam is not a religion of peace it's a religion of war of violence of terror of aggression that the people who follow Islam me my wife my retired parents my six-year-old child that 1.8 million of your fellow British residents and citizens at 1.6 billion people across the world your fellow human beings are all followers promoters believers in a religion of violence do you really think that do you really believe that to be the case they say that in the Oxford Union the most famous debate within 1933 when Adolf Hitler looked out for the result of the king and country motion where they voted against fighting for king and country and Hitler was listening out for the result well tonight 80 years on there are two groups of people around the world who I would argue awaiting for the result of tonight's vote there are the millions of peaceful non-violent law-abiding Muslims both in the UK Europe Asia Africa and Beyond who see Islam as the source of their identity as a source of spiritual fulfillment of hope of Solace and there are the phones the haters the bigots out there who want to push the clash of civilizations who want to divide all of us into them and us and ours and their ladies in London I urge you all not to fuel the arguments of the phobes and bigots don't legitimate their divisions don't legitimize their hate trust those Muslims who you know who you've met through you here who don't believe in violence who do want you to hear the peaceful message of the Quran as they believe it to be taught to the majority of Muslims the Islam of peace and compassion and mercy the Islam of the Quran not of al-qaeda ladies and gentlemen I beg to propose this motion without I urge you to vote YES tonight thank you very much

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 8,591,453

Rating: 4.4749856 out of 5

Keywords: Mehdi Hasan, Islam is a Peaceful Religion, Oxford Union, Islam, Peaceful, Religion, Oxford Union Society, Islam Debate, Muslim Journalist, Huffington Post, Political Editor, Muslim, Woolwich, Beheading, Violence, Hijack, Faith, Religious, War, Quran, Qur'an, 9/11, Proposition, Opposition, Oxford University, University, Debates, Debating, Interview

Id: Jy9tNyp03M0

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Dyshoreh]

Mashallah! I just watched this a few hours ago!

[u/AManOfTheEarth]

I watch this every so often to get that hit of feeling proud again for Mehdi. May Allah bless him, aameen.

[u/Outrageous_Ad5685]

So satisfying to watch

[u/[deleted]]

And I thought I knew English.

[u/DueAwareness9193]

One of the greatest debates in Oxford history.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/Bikram_Saini]

I never tire of watching this.

[u/Kafshak]

Mehdi Hassan is awesome.

[u/Dragonsbreath67]

I used to be an Islamophobe, but then by coincidence I made a Muslim friend who turned out to be a really cool dude. Now I call many Muslims close friends and have a lot of respect for the faith and find Islamophobia completely vile and disgusting.