Love and tolerance...except if your Gay,Jewish,youre not an apostate and you dont draw cartoons.

Maybe Medhi you can play this to the 3000 British muslims who travelled to Pakistan to train in terrorist camps. How many terrorist attacks have the EDL committed? A couple of chaotic drunken demos hardly compares to downing a few aircraft with liquid explosives.

Im sure the Danish cartoonist who has twice been nearly murdered for daring to exercise his democratic right to freedom of expression would love to be able to walk out of his house knowing that Islam is really religion of peace and tolerance and he wont get attacked. Lets not forget salman Rushdie, Theo Van Gogh and Arishi Ali.

EDL are now the scapegoat not the islamists who caused their formation in the first place. The left have done it again, blame everybody else but Miltant Islam.

what a joke your are Mr Hasan. FACT

Mehdi, I love your style man! Totally unconventional, unapologetic and different. Nice one :)

OMG - Hasan has finally lost the plot...we were waiting for his apology and spin on the dispatches program last night and how it was all taken out of context (as was his own Kuffar speech) and that he got a beating at the same age and that it didn't do him any harm type stuff...

and sitting in bed last night he probably thought to himself...even I cant blag my way out of this one...

So he finds some spurious clip (by a Muslim outcast) on you tube and thinks I know what, lets bash those EDL characters and lets hope noone mentions dispatches...ROFL

Care to comment on these Muslims and what they about Valentines day?

Malaysia warns Muslims of Valentine's Day 'trap

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12443104

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/14/AR201102...
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An Indonesian Muslic cleric has warned his young followers against celebrating Valentine's Day, saying it is the same as promoting faiths other than Islam and could lead to forbidden sex.

Malaysia: Over 200 Muslims arrested for celebrating Valentine's Day

Because it's "linked to Christianity," doncha know.

"There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious." -- Ayatollah Khomeini

No fun, no joy -- and don't even get him started about romance.
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/malaysia-arrests-100-muslim-couples-...

@John

Well yeah, there are plenty of those around - but they're usually pretty conventional, not to mention predictable. Quite a few of 'em on these blogs pages too :)

Did Medhi Hasan really post this?

Has the debate degenerated to the level of arguing as to who is less contemptible; the EDL or the world's billion + Muslims.

Come to that what is the debate in the first place.

Mehdi is almost certainly more capable than this.

Like many on the economically entrenched (ie those who have a career dependent on their status as a polemic) wings, I think a sense of humour would be useful.

After all, chromosomely deficient skinheads arguing Nietzsche inspired epistemology is quite amusing.

To any who call the EDL violent, you have no idea what true violence is and you haven't seen anything yet?

You really are fighting the demons in your own mind and you have revealed far more about yourself than you wished to.

You have my sympathy and I hope you grow from the poisonous self hating state you find yourself in, to be what you can be which I'm sure we can all see is better than you are now.

Good luck.

Mehdi Hasan becomes more ridiculous by the day, he has long since given up being a political commentator which he is employed to be.

He now seems to be soley focussed on defending one particular religion before anything else.

Come on NS, you've got plenty of people than this raver!

@ moronamid - WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU ON ABOUT???

@sven king

I find jokers like yourself quite immature and seriously wonder how old you must be. Are you implying that these articles you've pulled out represent the whole of Islam? You think the goings on in a community in Malaysia represents the 1.3 BILLION Muslims out there? Seriously, get a life.

To me, people who will make the effort to only look for negative news that might degrade a people or religion have a serious ehical and moral problem. And it's paradoxic how, in their claim to appeal for fairness and justice, they deliberately look for any negatives as well as any way to demean a religion and civilisation.

That kind of hypocricy is only too evident. To all islamophobes: do us all, and especially yourselves, a favour and look for some integrity and dignity.

@ sven king

A good summary, it left me speechless after I'd watched it.

@ Dan

You are right that people dislike Mehdi Hasan because he promotes Islam. But it is not his job - he is the political editor of the New Statesman not an imam. Where are his posts on feminist issues and the plight of sexual minorities? Nearly everything he writes about has an Islamic bent - and he wonders why people think he's a closet Islamist.

@ Shkara - as usual, claiming your victim status... not addressing the real concerns and blaming others for reporting on them.

@Mathhew Blot - your spot on, we dont trust Medhi as he has spouted the same Hateful rhetoric as the people in dispatches and says its all out of context, I just cannot trust him.

@ Stuart Eels
I tend to agree with you. As a longer than I care to remember reader of the NS I do find it hard to take that the 'political editor' spends most of his time defending and prosletyzing for his chosen religion rather than relentlesly attacking this shoddy and inhumane government.
Polemic is one thing but when all it does is deflect what we should be arguing about to a minority archaic set of bigoted religious beliefs then you have to wonder what has happened to the left.

Tunisia: Muslims demonstrate in front of synagogue, chanting Islamic battle cry invoking Muhammad's massacre of Jews,

They're chanting "Allahu akbar" and "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, jaish Muhammad sa yaoud" -- "Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return."

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1651085112058&oid=148870281832...

Randomly pulling quotes from the Koran doesn't really prove anything.

Muslims believe that the Koran is the absolute word of God as told to the illiterate Mohamed which was then told to his followers and remembered by his followers and then written down at some later stage many years after the event. Later verses that contradict earlier ones are to be accepted in preference. So Allah the infallible must have made mistakes the first time round. Funnily enough the later verses always seemed to coincide with what Mohamed wanted to happen.

Now is anyone seeing some gaps in this philosophy that any half decent lawyer let alone a QC could drive a horse and cart through.

If that does not inspire some questions in your mind let me play my trump card. There is no God or Allah or whatever you choose to call your chosen invisible supreme being. So quoting his so called divinely inspired words is really just nonsense. And what does that make the people who accept them as divine.
This applies to all deity based religions by the way not just Islam.

Oh and by making these observations I have just given myself an automatic death sentence which if some religious nut could find me they would carry out. Hence my use of a public net access and pseudonym. Why should that be necessary for not agreeing with what someone else thinks.

The Prime Minister is a true Gentleman and totally honest

"If you fear highhandedness from your wives, remind them [of the teaching of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them." An-Nisa, 34

Noses are red,
Eyesockets are blue,
If feminist commenters are curiously quiet re: Islam,
I am too!

I found this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APAPqT3QdFU

Would you like to comment Medhi, or do we just accept you as a bigot?

Evidently your 'understanding' of Islam has not effected a 'liberal' attitude in you.

Andy - when is your next edl rally?
By the way what is a Kuffir? C'mon you amoeba at least try to spell! But then again the edl members are never going to be accused of being scholars!

what about a valentines video for the racist,fascist,bigoted,nazi, islamic vermin who was exposed last night on channel 4 dispatches documentary in lessons in hate and violence,,see how medhi hassan has avoided making any comment about that,,why is that you ask??because he agrees with the the fascist swines of hate, and as usual the left wing vermin cloglites are silent on the same matter,,i am 100% in support of the edl..so screw you medhi babe lol you muslim extremist bigot..

Hasan, how dare you?
You are a disgrace. You are a hypocrtical anti non-Muslim whose cover up is trying to come across as a progressive leftie. Do you think we are all stupid?
Your views are a disgrace, and your attempt at a justification for them is even worse.
People aren't fooled young man.

The point Mehdi is making here and has been doing so many times is simply that the blanket condemnation of Islam and all Muslims as extreme and violent by edl and some of the people here is unfair, selective and plain wrong. He has also on a number of times condemned Islamic extremism and urged Muslims to engage constructively in the socio political sphere in this country. For that he gets accused of being an Islamist and a lot worse!

So, Mehdiy,

did you watch that Channel 4 prog about "lessons in hate and violence" ?

It's good to see what is happening in British schools and mosques. Islam is, after all, the religion of peace !!!!!!!!!!!

What a load of garbage. Islam IS what Muslims do. No wonder people are voting for unIslamic parties across Europe.

Radio 4 broadcast a programme about un-Islamic political parties. I think I will find it on the iPlayer. Should be a good laugh.

The people have woken up. We don't need to be bullied by people who call us "Islamophobes".

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many ! They are few !