Mehdi Hasan | Islam Is A Peaceful Religion | Oxford Union

[Music] [Applause] thank you very much MrPresident ladies and gentlemen good evening assalam alaykum lovely to see you all here tonight we are having a very entertaining night are we not with some very interesting things being said uh from the other side of the house tonight um 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 anarie for the barle bombings I apologize for the role of my religion and me and my people uh for the killing of Theo van go for seven seven yes that was all of us that was Islam that was Muslims that was the Quran I mean astonishing astonishing claims uh to make in the very first speech tonight 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for the labor party to become an MP in Brighton if you do and you make these comments I'm guessing you'll have the whip withdrawn from you but then again UK Kips On The Rise they'll take you the BNP they might have something to say about your views this is what n Hasan always say by the way by the way by the way by the way by the way just on a factual Point since we heard a lot about the second speaker about how 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 only 1,322 years off not bad not bad start there uh talking of maths by the way a man named alisi was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time a Muslim worked in the Golden Age of Islam he 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 have been able to print out his speech in which he came to break us 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 poit prizewinning historian and author of The Golden Crucible point out that there would be no Renaissance there would be no Reformation in Europe without the role played by I Sina and rush and some of the great Muslim theologians philosophers scientists in bringing Greek texts 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 too um an astonishing astonishing set of uh speeches so far making this case tonight uh a mixture of just cherry-picked quotes facts and figures s self- serving selective a farago of distortions misrepresentations misinterpretations misquotations uh Daniel talked about my article in the new Statesman which got me a lot of flak where I talked about the anti-Semitism that is prevalent in some parts of the Muslim Community which indeed it is uh 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 certainly bad things happened to the Jewish people in fact Tom fredman Jewish American columnist of New York Times told me in this very chamber last week that he believed had Muslims been running Europe in the 1940s 6 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 that murdered 6 million Jews uh moving swiftly on moving swiftly on you doing exactly absolutely well I'm about to make that point no no no I'm about to make that 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 barle bombing and we pull out examples of anti-Semitism in Islamic 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 as to be fair to anmarie and to Peter atheists atheists see all religions as evil violent threatening what the problem I have with Daniel's speech is that Daniel comes here to rount 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 programs European colonialism in Africa and Asia the Lord's resistance Army in Uganda not to mention countless Arsen 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 violence Terror and intolerance but no thank you some water some water 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 L does in Uganda or what what Crusaders did uh to Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem when 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 113 out of the 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 not aemotion about pacifism 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 yes a minority of Muslims do take it out of that context but is it religious we talked about willich Daniel and anarie 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 a 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's 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 holster let alone to talk about what Muslims believe or think instead we have people coming here putting forward the 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 secular and strategic goal to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their Homeland and the irony is when we talk about terrorism the irony is that the opposition and the Muslim terrorist the al-Qaeda 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 AMA bin lad would be nodding along to everything he's heard tonight from the opposition that he agrees with [Applause] them the problem is the problem is that mainstream Muslims don't the majority of Muslims around the world don't in fact a gentleman here can started quoting all sorts of polls Gallup carried out the biggest poll of Muslims around the world of 35,000 50,000 Muslims in 35 countries 93% of Muslims rejected 9/11 and suicide attacks and of the 7% who didn't they all when pulled and focus grouped cited political reasons for their support for violence not religious reasons and as for Islamic scholars and what they say well Daniel talks about our University of Oxford we'll go down to Oxford's Center for Islamic Studies get hold of a man named shik aifi Al akiti who is a massively well credentialed and well respected Islamic scholar who was studied across the world who in the days after 77 published a fatwa 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 she one of Pakistan's most famous Islamic scholars who published a 600 page fatwa condemning the killing of all Innocents and all suicide bombings unconditionally without any ifs or buts there's nothing new here this is mainstream Islam mainstream scholarship which has 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 of information please well it doesn't happen apparently I didn't say it doesn't happen at all I never said it didn't happen I don't blame Islam 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 it in the name of various interpretations of Islam anarie 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 interruption so I think you should stay there for a moment what we de what we're dealing with we are dealing I took your point I took 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 were yesterday's attackers sorry motivated by Islam big debate I don't believe they were let's say they were let's say fisel Shazad the Time Square bomber was motivated by Islam let's assume for sake of argument that Richard Rees the shoe bomber was by Islam if Islam is responsible for these killings if Islam is what is motivating these people and Islam is therefore not a religion of Peace a religion of 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% 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 P pull open our jackets and blow ourselves up to that CU we're followers of a warlike Warrior religion which wants to take over Europe and Daniel's University the the issue is this the issue is this unless 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 why don't 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 and gentlemen 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 motion is that Islam isn't 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 that 1.