Bigotry towards Islam has been 'normalised', says Mehdi Hasan | LBC

I'm joined now by medy Hassan, editor-in-chief journalist and CEO of New Media Company Zeto medy, thanks for joining me, tell me what you thought when you heard that clip, thanks for having me. I thought about many things. I mean to me. and Richard Dawkins go back a long time. We have

been

training for over a decade. I interviewed him on my then Al Jazer show in 2012 about religion and some things come to mind for years, his followers and he told me and others that Let's not hate Islam, we are not messing with Islam, we hate all religions and people would say, "I'm not sure I believe you," and I think there was confirmation of that on Sunday with Rachel Johnson, where she made it very clear that she likes it.

Christianity, he doesn't really like Islam, so I'm glad the cats are finally out of the bag; It took people about 12 years to catch up. He would also say that he didn't surprise me with what he said because he has

been

following his career and has been very anti-Islam for a while. This is a man who called Islam a cancer and said Islam is the greatest force for evil in the world. In that clip he distinguished between Islam and Muslims, but of course. He has also said things like who does this, who the hell do these Muslims think they are.

He once asked me to be fired from the new Statesman because I believe in Islamic beliefs, which he then had to retract and apologize for, so he has a long process. story, he has form on this topic and iska. The third thing he would say is the amount of falsehoods in that entire exchange. Since when is Ramadan promoted during Easter? Where is the evidence for that? There is no evidence that LBC in its tweet yesterday was referring to it. The Easter lights are not on, but the Ramadan lights are on. I haven't lived in the UK for 9 years and yes, but I lived there for 36 years before that.

I don't remember seeing any Easter lights at that time. That's a very good point. they're Easter lights I know they're Christmas lights I don't know what Easter lights are so this is a bit of a fake queue this is a private effort it's not the government it's not Mayor Khan it's not the GLA and look why Don't we celebrate all religions? My Jewish cousins ​​had Hanukah in Traga Square in December. There was a huge manora and Hanukah lights number one. Brilliant. I love it. We should have more of that number two. I don't remember Richard Dawkins or others in the right-wing media making a fuss about it and if Jeremy Corbin had come out and said "I'm very unhappy about this manora display in Traag Square, you and your colleagues would rightly be all over him, So why don't we criticize Richard?" Dawkins for this because Islamophobia is much more acceptable today, unfortunately, than any other type of intolerance towards religious communities.

Well, what do you think it really means to talk about cultural Christianity that way? Because one of the things I find is that you can have a conversation about religion and I quite enjoyed his book The God Delusion um, but there's a separate conversation and it's about what people are like in their normal lives and you know I was actually following a MP daor Butler recently because I'm doing a What's happening is that MPS was attacked a lot more and I was in a mosque and Sadique Khan was there and the local rabbi was there and the Jews and the Muslims were living next to each other living their lives and the description you sometimes get of what it could be.

Being Muslim or Jewish simply does not exist, as far as I know, in people's everyday lives. Yeah, and a couple of things before we answer your question about cultural Christianity, let's be very clear about Islamophobia here. It is no coincidence that people are attacking Sadic Khan for being the Muslim mayor of London, including his Conservative rival. You have a Muslim First Minister of Scotland. You've got a lot of mosques being built, as Rachel ominously referred to in that clip and people are very UPS would change, they don't like the idea that oh the Muslims are coming.

The Lord of Sharia takes care of all this nonsense that the right-wing media has fed over the years. I think Kit Kat has recently come under fire for doing something about Ramadan in the UK. all very uh this is not this is not a coincidence um as far as cultural Christianity Richard Dor is trying to have his cake and eat it as you say, he wrote The God Delusion, he spent years attacking organized religion and now he

says

, well, I quite like the parts. that involve singing and architecture those parts, can we stay well first of all again?

I question the premise, he

says

I don't want to lose our Cathedrals, are we losing the Cathedrals? Inka. I don't live in the UK, you work for ITV News right? I have done a breaking news story about cathedrals being dismantled before our eyes. I also quite like cathedrals, by the way, I am more pro-Christian than him. I love Jesus. I am all for Christians going to church. He's the one who spent years. attacking religion and now he says, well, people don't go to church and the churches are empty, whose fault is Richard Dawkins, maybe it's yours, maybe you should look in the mirror and ask why people don't go to church. church.

I do not see why. He blames Muslims because Christians no longer attend church. I find this very strange and are you concerned about the type of debate in the UK at the moment? When it comes to being Muslim, it's very, very worrying for everyone I talk to. The UK, from what I'm seeing from afar, is very worrying when, for example, we have the former Home Secretary saying that Islamists rule Britain and the former Vice President of the Conservative Party saying that Sadic Khan has been handed back to London to his fellow Islamists. Let us remember that we would not tolerate this language about any other religion, religious community or minority if Zack Goldsmith had defeated Sodic Khah and was the Jewish mayor of London and someone in the Labor Party came out and said he had handed London over to his Zionist Friends, we would be in war footing and rightly so, so they can't just spread these kinds of lazy racist and bigoted tropes and watch when Richard Dawkin says that Islam is hostile to women and homosexuals, number one making a radical claim about thousands of millions of people is the definition of intolerance and number two, it says that Christianity is a fundamentally decent religion.

I agree with that, but every religion has its extremists that come to the United States, where I see what Christian nationalist politicians are doing on the abortion front, how they are criminalizing women, uh and risking their lives, go to Africa and see what the Christian church is doing to gay communities in Africa. Every religion has its extremists and greats. Every religion is dealing with these things. Don't just mess with Islam, for God's sake, well, let me, let me. I ask you about that, okay, religion, and I'm talking about religion here, I'm not talking about how cultural we are.

There is a current through religions in which women have been oppressed and in which homosexuals have been oppressed, how do we have that conversation? Without offending people, isn't it okay to be able to say this in the Bible or this in the Koran? This has led to a situation where people are oppressed. I'm totally in favor of that. Do you want to quote the Bible or the Koran? All day long, that's not what Richard Dawkins did, wasn't Richard Dawkins yesterday on LBC in front of millions of people? This eminent biologist said that Christianity is a fundamentally decent religion and Islam will never be that way again if you had gone on the radio and said Christianity.

It's a decent religion and Judaism I don't think you would have seen much bigger reaction. We have normalized intolerance towards Islam in a way that we haven't seen against other religious communities and I think you should be able to have those conversations. In es, I've had those conversations, I've written about homophobia and Islam, I've written about misogyny and Islam, so I've had those conversations. What you don't do is not say that Christianity is great for women, it just has some problems with women Vicor Meanwhile, Islam has a hostility towards all women, that's nonsense, you can't make these radical statements, You can't pretend that one religion has an amazing track record and the other doesn't, and classify these religions this way and, if you do, you need to bring a lot more evidence to the table than the great evidence-based Richard Dawkins bothered to bring. medy.

Thank you very much for his time. I really appreciate him joining us on this.