Washington DC-based journalist, Mehdi Hasan, has been widely criticized after a video of his old remarks has resurfaced on the internet.
The story has all started when Hasan, the Intercept and Al Jazeera English TV host, went to Twitter last week in the wake of the Christchurch attack in New Zealand to tweet an extended apology over his old offensive remarks made years ago.
In a 14-tweet thread, Hasan mentioned his offensive remarks in which he compared non-Muslims and atheists to cattle in addition to other homophobic insensitive remarks. The journalist assumed the responsibility for apologizing and getting his “rhetoric right”. He also links articles he wrote about the issue years ago in the Huffington Post and the New Statesman.
In one of the recordings that seemed to be made during a sermon on Islamic law, he said: “In this respect, the Koran describes the atheist as cattle. As cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”
As the internet never forgets, and almost everything online seems to be weaponized in the western culture war, an exchange of the video was perhaps always going to happen.
Sam Harris, a popular online atheist who has critiziced all religions and is affiliated with the "Intellectual Dark Web," took issue with being labeled as a 'bigot' by Hasan. In a sign of the media and political system we all now inhabit, an all too familiar exchange of character assasination and semantics designed to delegitimize and stigmatize then took place between both individuals.
The story went viral on social media and users started jumping on it.
Opinions were divided between critics of Mehdi Hasan and others supporting him.
