Mehdi Hasan

Mehdi Raza Hasan (born July 1979)  is a British-American progressive broadcaster, political commentator, columnist, author and co-founder of the media company Zeteo. He presented The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC from February 2021 until the show's cancellation in November 2023. On the final broadcast on 7 January 2024, he announced that he was leaving MSNBC. In February 2024, Hasan joined The Guardian as a columnist.

A graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, Hasan began his television career as a researcher and then producer on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme. Following a stint on the BBC's The Politics Show he became deputy executive producer on Sky's breakfast show Sunrise before moving to Channel 4 as their editor of news and current affairs. In 2009 he was appointed senior editor for politics at the New Statesman. In 2012 he became a presenter on Al Jazeera's English news channel, and in 2015 moved to Washington, D.C. to work full-time for Al Jazeera on UpFront and host the Deconstructed podcast produced by the online publication The Intercept from 2018 to 2020.

Hasan is the author of Win Every Argument, and the co-author of a biography of former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. He was formerly the political editor of the UK edition of The Huffington Post and the presenter of the Al Jazeera English shows: The Café, Head to Head and UpFront.

He created the digital media company, Zeteo News, in February 2024: the media "features a broad range of opinions and ideas—not just his".

Early life and education
Mehdi Raza Hasan was born in Swindon to immigrant Indian Hyderabadi Shia Muslim parents from the city of Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, South India (now in Telangana).

Hasan was privately educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, a day independent school for boys at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers District of Hertfordshire, near the town of Northwood in North West London. He then attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), and graduated in 2000.

2009–2011: Early beginnings
Hasan worked as a researcher and then producer on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, with a brief period in between on BBC One's The Politics Show. Following this, he became deputy executive producer on Sky's breakfast show Sunrise before moving to Channel 4 as their editor of news and current affairs. He was appointed senior editor for politics at the New Statesman in late spring of 2009, where he stayed until May 2012, then becoming political director of The Huffington Post website.

2012–2020: Al Jazeera and The Intercept
Hasan became a presenter on Al Jazeera's English news channel in May 2012. Hasan has appeared (six times) on the BBC's Question Time programme, and the Sunday morning programmes The Big Questions and Sunday Morning Live. In 2013, Hasan took part in a debate at the Oxford Union to consider whether Islam is a peaceful religion. Hasan, who is an Ithna’Asheri Shia Muslim, vouched for Islam as a religion of peace, citing political and cultural reasons for violence in Muslim majority countries, as opposed to holding the religion of Islam responsible. In the vote on the motion, the house affirmed with Hasan and the other proposers that Islam is a religion of peace with 286 votes in favor and 168 votes against. Recorded at the Oxford Union, Head to Head was a programme on Al Jazeera English in which Hasan interviewed public figures; it had run for three series by December 2014. Since 2015, working full-time for the network in Washington, D.C., Hasan has hosted a weekly interview and discussion programme.

Hasan began a podcast in 2018 entitled Deconstructed, produced by the investigative journalism website The Intercept. On air, Hasan would discuss recent news topics and host guests. Notable topics covered on the podcast include police brutality, inequality, QAnon, and Donald Trump's activity on Twitter. Notable podcast guests have included Noam Chomsky, Ilhan Omar, and Bernie Sanders. On 2 October 2020, Hasan announced that he would no longer host the show as part of his move to host The Mehdi Hasan Show on NBC's new streaming service, Peacock.

2021–2024: The Mehdi Hasan Show and move from MSNBC to The Guardian
Hasan hosted The Mehdi Hasan Show on the online service Peacock since Oct 2020 airing weeknights at 7 pm Eastern. Notable guests on The Mehdi Hasan Show have included Mark Ruffalo, Jon Stewart, John Bolton, Keith Ellison, Ro Khanna, John Legend, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In March 2021, Hasan launched the same show on MSNBC every Sunday evening. He was also the fill-in host on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show, The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.

During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, MSNBC cancelled the shows of Hasan as well as and two other Muslim commentators, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi. NBC stated the shifts were coincidental and not due to the hosts' religion. Eric Bazail-Eimil of Politico noted, the decision made by the network "in favor of more straight news coverage of the conflict". On 30 November 2023, it was announced that Hasan's MSNBC and Peacock shows would end. Hasan announced at the end of his final show on 7 January 2024 that he had decided to leave the network. Hasan joined The Guardian as a regular columnist in February. In March 2015, Hasan appeared in a Guardian opinion video on UK immigration.

2024: Launching of the digital media company Zeteo
Forbes interviewed Hasan in February 2024 when the website Zeteo News was created. Hasan stated: Zeteo "is an ancient Greek word that means to seek out, to inquire, to get to the truth". Zeteo was presented as a subscription-based news organization. He announced that the platform will "bring you hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis that you won’t find elsewhere". Hasan presents a new video series on the Zeteo News channel, the first one was called "Debunked! Top seven lies about Gaza".

Contributors announced upon Zeteo's launch in April 2024 included Naomi Klein, Greta Thunberg, Viet Thanh Nguyen, John Harwood, Fatima Bhutto and Owen Jones, who would co-host the podcast Two Outspoken alongside Hasan. On April 19, 2024, it was announced that Bassem Youssef will join Zeteo as co-host for their new podcast 'We're Not Kidding'.

Israel–Hamas War
During an interview on Democracy Now! in late March 2024, Hasan expressed his concern about "genocide in Gaza" with regard to Israel's 2023 incursion into Gaza after the October 7 attack on Israel, and that Palestinian perspectives aren't shared in U.S. media. Middle East Eye reported that Hasan "challenges Piers Morgan's treatment of pro-Palestinian guests".

Abortion
Hasan was formerly against abortion, a position he has since abhorred. In an October 2012 online column for the New Statesman he defended his anti-abortion views in print, writing "What I would like is for my fellow lefties and liberals to try to understand and respect the views of those of us who are pro-life". Hasan argued that the issue of abortion "is one of those rare political issues on which left and right seem to have swapped ideologies: right-wingers talk of equality, human rights and 'defending the innocent', while left-wingers fetishise 'choice', selfishness and unbridled individualism." He later regretted expressing himself in this way. However, the article gained much attention on Twitter and Hasan debated the issue with Suzanne Moore on BBC Radio 4's Today.

Telegraph blogger Brendan O'Neill thought both Hasan and his pro-choice opponents shared an "instinct for paternalism, a belief that the job of the modern Left is to care for and coo over the weak and puny of the world." Meanwhile, Labour MP Diane Abbott thought that "any feminist, worth the name, knows that control over [our] own bodies is ground zero for every educational, social and economic advance that women have made in the last century". Cristina Odone wrote: "... there is no greater intolerance than that of the so-called tolerant liberals: pro-choice advocates will not allow any discussion of abortion that questions the status quo. Poor Hasan ventured into terrain marked 'taboo'".

In a 2020 series of tweets, Hasan expressed regrets for "having expressed offensive & illiberal views in the past on everything from homosexuality to abortion" and stated that they were views he no longer holds.

Pakistan
Hasan has been critical of the human rights situation in Pakistan, expressing disapproval of the country's blasphemy law, as well as enforced disappearances in Balochistan. He has also criticised the human rights situation in both Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and has called out alleged backing from Pakistan for terror groups like Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba to carry out attacks in the Indian-administered region.

In a May 2021 interview with CNN on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that Israelis "are very influential people”, adding, “I mean, they control media.” Hasan tweeted during the ensuing controversy: “I see some people trying to defend the Pakistani foreign minister's remarks as anti-Israeli & not anti-Semitic but let's be clear: if you are accusing Israelis of having ‘deep pockets’ and ‘controlling’ the media, then yeah, you're invoking some pretty anti-Semitic slurs. Sorry.”

Saudi Arabia
Hasan has made several statements in opposition to the Saudi government, including challenging a statement made by Donald Trump, in which he claimed that he himself had no financial interests in Saudi Arabia, an allegation which Trump called "fake news". Hasan challenged Trump's statements in a video essay published by The Intercept in October 2018.

In February 2019, during a debate organised by Intelligence Squared in London, Hasan stated that the West should cut ties with Saudi Arabia, saying: "It's time we make clear that the West needs to cut its ties with Saudi Arabia, especially military ties, arms exports, weapons, bombs."

The comments were made in response to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly ordered by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman, as well as several human rights violations which Hasan cited as also being carried out by Saudi Arabia. Hasan had previously interviewed Khashoggi about freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia.

2009 sermon controversy
During a sermon delivered in 2009, quoting a verse of the Quran, Hasan used the terms "cattle" and "people of no intelligence" to describe non-believers. In another sermon, he used the term "animals" to describe non-Muslims. In 2019, Mehdi apologized for these earlier statements and called them "dumb", "ranty" and "offensive".

Citizenship
Hasan became a naturalised citizen of the United States on 9 October 2020, in time to vote in the 2020 United States presidential election.

Recognition
In January 2014, Hasan was awarded the Services to Media award at the British Muslim Awards. In 2017, he was named European Young Leader by the Brussels-based Friends of Europe think tank. In 2019, Hasan won the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award for Online Column Writing.

Selected works

 * With James Macintyre. Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour leader, London, Biteback Publishing, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84954-102-2
 * Summer of Unrest: The Debt Delusion: Exposing ten Tory myths about debts, deficits and spending cuts, Vintage Digital, 28 July 2011.
 * Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. Henry Holt and Co. 2023. ISBN 9781250853479