Dear Mr Mehdi Hassan
I just watched your pro Europe stance on Question time.
How about an Arab spring here ?
How about we leave the EU then rule ourselves like Libya & Egypt will, instead of us being ruled by Brussels ?
John Redwood can say it better than I. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ybR_OesyA

Why do you believe the UK must be in the EU ?
Switzerland does better out of it so would we.

The significance of Geographical location has been hugely exagerated by Europhiles. We can do business with the world. Buy from the cheapest & sell for the highest. What difference does it make how close the country is.

Market places exist in spite of Eurocrats & politicians... not because of them.

Here's a few of the reasons the electorate should be incensed that Cameron refused us a referendum on the EU.

EU =

1] Evermore over crowding.

2] A troubled currency we are insnared with

3] Fish thrown back into the North sea even though they've died in the nets, once quotas are reached for a particular species.

4] Language problems. Example, my mother in law is in a nursing home on the IOW staffed by East Europeans. She can hardly understand them & the can hardly understand her. Yet good communication is essential in giving good care.

5] High levels of crime committed by nomads who can wander from one EU country to another now including the UK now our borders are freely open to 400 million people.

6] Child Beggars, sex traffickers & pick pockets from Romania.

7] More competition for insufficient homes & scarce jobs.

8] More road congestion

9] 10% of our orchards bulldozed into the ground cos the Eurocrats decided there's over production of apples in the Euro zone, regarless of whether we happen to like Brit apples !

10] Huge cost of £30 an hour translators in courtrooms & classrooms disrupting the education of our kids.

11] Fat cat 'job for life plus index linked pension' eurocrats who feast on our taxes but produce nothing but red tape in return.

12] £46,000,000 a day we give to the EU & get nothing but dictats in return. It will be £41 billion over the next 5 years ! Twice what it was for the last 5 years under the previous government. Money we desperately need for our schools & our hospitals etc

13] It's a myth we need to be in the EU to trade with Europe. The Swiss do very nicely trading with Europe whilst at the same time enjoying the freedoms of not being in the EU.Ironically EU red tape makes it harder to do business with the EU. Yet we voted originally only for a common market to supposedly make trade easier. What have we got instead.... we are heading towards a republic of Europe where we lose sovereignty.

14] We've lost the right to make our own laws.

15] The latest dictat from Brussels means companies like Tescos have to reduce the number of part time workers. Regardless of whether it's suits them & their employees such as mums wanting to only work part time.

16] East Europeans claiming child benefits for children that aren't even in the UK.

17] Our legal system hamstrung with human rights legislation issuing forth from UN ELECTED EU judges, with terrorist bombers having more human rights than their victims. Also in respect of repatriating criminals.

18] The accountants refuse to sign off the EU accounts because of huge discrpancies & money that can't be accounted for.

19] In Southampton we lost the Dimplex factory because they got a fat subsidy from Brussels to move to Ireland. Bournemouth lost the Johnson & Johnson factory too. It's all part of the Pol Pot EU philosophy that everywhere has to be equal. Namely it's not enough the Ireland should remain a green & pleasant farming land.
No... instead Ireland has to have by dictat exactly the same number of factories per sq mile as everywhere else. Uniformity rules according to the Autocratic Euro crats. This must be going on nationwide. These are just two examples I happen to know of because they are local.
God knows how many other jobs we've been robbed of by Brussels.
So we pay a Euro subsidy of £46m per day, some of which goes to rob us of decent productive jobs here !!!!!!!!!!!To add to the farce, some of the trainees that came from Ireland to learn the ropes in the Johnson & Johnson factory before it moved to Ireland, didn't even turn up for half the training sessions cos they'd been out on the booze every night. Then some of them decided they didn't even want to go back to Ireland.
Laughable if it wasn't such a waste of our money !
No businessman in their right mind would move for the sake of it using their own money. But when some little job for life bureaucrats in brussels who couldn't run a whelk stall, throw our money at this sort of thing. Well how can any rational person possible think the EU is a good thing.
It's the same kind of insanity that happened under Stalin.
We live in the EUSSR !

The thing that Mehdi doesnt allude to is that dictatorships are now being replaced with the Islamic Theocracy's which will bring the rest of the middle east in Line with the likes of Iran and Saudi Arabia...

Arab Spring...pah...more like a Islamic Winter...

@Ian-So where would you like the arab shias to go? Perhaps Bahrain where the cousins of the Saudi regime can welcome them? Or i hear Iraq is nice this time of year. Look at the news and you will see whats going on there.

The truth is there seems to be separate rules for the Saudis and I agree with Mehdi...depressing :(

Mehdi, you are right in some cases about the hypocricy of the UK and USA, however you are as bad. No matter what course the government takes, whether intervention as in Libya, sanctions against an increasingly aggressive Iran,or in the case of Saudi staying out of there affairs (which is what you call for all the time)surprise,surprise Mehdi can be counted on to take the opposite view. It is clear that you are smart when it comes to foreign policy, but i find it increasingly difficult to read your columns as they are sounding more anti western as time goes on. Please be more honest about your agenda then mabye it might make more sense.

@ Imran
I hear what you say and agree. But on the basis that a 'so called' Islamic country like Saudi Arabia has two of the most holy sites in the Islamic world in Mecca and Medina, does it occur to you that the fact you can practice whichever religion you like and the freedom you enjoy is more to do with the secularism of Britain rather than the tenets of your religion?

I am not in the least surprised in Cameron and Obama's attitude not much to do with religion. everything to do with oil

Ah so another divide that justifies violence and hatred. So being Arab or Persian is of greater/ or equal importance to whom you believe should be what? the Islamic equivalent of Pope, that is the sunni shia divide is it not.

Would a Saudi Shia be persecuted or oppressed to the same level if they moved to Iran .

Heck and the west gets the blame..

I am getting sick and tired of people associating Islam with so called countries that claim to be "Islamic". I am a muslim and proud. I am british and proud. I would not want to practice my religion in any other country in the world other than Britain because, in my opinion, Britain is the most "Islamic" country in the world in terms of its laws and regulations.

Its easy for people to look at other countries and slag them off. What we need to do is start addressing our problems at home. We have a huge alcohol and drug problem especially within our youths. Lets start addressing that problem first before we giving so much attention to the problems of other countries.

There are two choices of government in the Islamic world: military dictatorship, or Islamic dictatorship. We gotta go with the former.

Oh Medhi, I look forward to your opinion on the Gulnaz marriage, now that is repression.

Let me guess it punishes the man as he is obliged to provide for his victim and child....

Wow the old divide and rule still works very well!!
Unfortunately when we wake up it may be very late.

Mehdi - good article: the pro-western theocracy that is Saudi Arabia ( or "the biggest womens prison on earth" ) is as vile as the Iranian republic, or the scores of other hardcore Islamic regimes that soil this planet, from the new sharia-loving Libyan government to Hamas to Hezbollah to Boko Haram..

But you still dont get it, Mehdi - religion (especially a fundamentalist and literalist one such as Islam) should never be allowed any legal or political power, or you will always get murder, repression, and un-freedom, be it of the Sunni or Shia kind.

And no I dont want a pro-Iranian regime there, or in Bahrain...you should be advocating for more liberal freedoms including freedom FROM religion and full human rights including womens rights and gay rights across the Middle East..this is the New Statesman you work for, after all!