Spirited defence of Islam during a debate goes viral on Facebook

Defending a quarter of the global population from being labeled as crazed extremists shouldn’t be so revelatory. But it is. The latest video to go viral on Facebook shows Mehdi Hasan, the political editor of the UK version of the Huffington Post, doing a brilliant job of defending Islam as a religion of peace in an Oxford University debate with British councilwoman Anne-Marie Waters. Waters, who is a spokesperson for the One Law For All campaign (which campaigns against ‘Sharia law’ being implemented in Britain), and a councilwoman for the National Secular Party, listed the events of 9/11, 7/7, Mali, Somalia, gender discrimination, forced marriages, polygamy, and amputation as reasons for Islam being an inherently violent religion. This video begins with Hasan’s defence of the religion. [caption id=“attachment_948465” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A screengrab from the Youtube video of Mehdi Hasan’s speech[/caption] Hasan reels off lists of Islamic intellectuals, the Muslim inventors of algebra and algorithms and assertions by European scholars that the Renaissance would never have happened without the contribution of Islamic academia to debunk Waters’ theory that Judeo-Christian society is more “advanced” than an Islamic one. He also reminds them of the violent history of the Judeo-Christian world. Anti-semitism, he points out, was a Western import into the Middle East. “Should we be really taking lessons in anti-semitism from a continent that murdered six million Jews?” he asks. His intent, he explains, isn’t to attack Europe or Christianity by citing such examples, but to underline the injustice in using say the Crusades or Inquisition or abortion clinic bombings to tarnish an entire religion. But the most powerful part of his speech is when he elucidates the absurdity of attributing violence of a miniscule minority to all followers of a religion who span the geographical and ethnic spectrum. “Let us, for argument’s sake, assume that there are 60,000 suicide bombers in the world,” Hasan says to the enthralled crowd. “There aren’t, but let’s assume. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world…they include me, my wife, my small child and my retired parents. Do you really think we are all followers, promoters and believers in a religion of violence?” Hasan concludes with one appeal to the crowds. “Don’t fuel the arguments of the phobes and bigots and legitimise hate,” he says. “Trust the Muslims you know and hear.” The result of the debate? People voted in favor of the motion: This House Believes Islam Is a Religion of Peace with 286: 168 votes. The video is better seen than described. Check it out for yourself.