Lies, Damned Lies, and Mehdi Hasan’s "Facts"

Rejecting the push for permanently supporting blue by attenuating genocide

Image taken from Unsplash

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" – Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Mehdi Hasan is perturbed. After a year of genocide in Gaza, American Muslim opinion has unsurprisingly turned against Harris, threatening her standing in swing states that are currently projected to be extremely close. Hasan understands the anti-Harris animus, admitting, “I get it. I feel it too.” But he worries that this anger has obscured what should otherwise be a rather clear, if controversial, political decision: a vote for Harris in this upcoming election is, for Hasan, an obvious choice given the alternatives. And although he isn’t exactly telling his audience how to vote (a point he makes rather clear), he proceeds to all but say ‘vote Harris.’

The full monologue where Hasan fleshes out this argument was published by Zeteo – a new media outlet founded by Hasan – and runs nine minutes in full. In it, Hasan implores American Muslims to think clearly, to use rational political judgment, and to understand the stakes of this upcoming election. Along the way, he builds the case for Harris, not so much by offering a compelling pro-Harris argument as much as he distorts, derides, and rejects the arguments made by those advocating for a third-party vote. Specifically, he targets a statement signed by dozens of Muslim leaders (including a few nobodies such as yours truly) as well as a now-viral appeal by Sami Hamdi imploring Muslims to abandon Harris in the name of punishing genocide.

With the election mere weeks away, understanding what a vote for Harris represents is crucial. And although the structure of Hasan’s arguments and the manner in which he lays them out appear persuasive on first blush, when subject to scrutiny, many of his claims fall apart rather quickly. Accordingly, what follows below is a brief examination of some of the core claims to hopefully provide clarity on what should be a definite political imperative, namely, punishing genocide however we can.

Point 1: Theology and Politics

Hasan’s first objection, and perhaps least controversial to many listeners, is that religion has been inappropriately weaponized by some to emotionally and spiritually blackmail people into voting against the Democratic Party. Here, he highlights a post by Green Party VP candidate Butch Ware referring to Muslim Democratic Party defenders as ‘Muslims’ in single quotes, which Hasan reads as a questioning of their faith.

Although accusing Muslims of apostasy over partisan political preferences is certainly inappropriate, at the expense of stating the obvious, questioning whether someone is acting like a Muslim is not the same as declaring one an apostate. Hasan inexplicably conflates the two, sanctimoniously moralizing against a problem that he exaggerates as widespread.

More generally, Muslims need to reject the idea that Islam is irrelevant to the public square or should not inform the decisions they make in public life. Islam is not merely a private, personal confession that informs our sense of self and refines our character. It is also a comprehensive set of beliefs, including how to live morally.

A believer indifferent to his brethren's suffering demonstrates a weakened faith. Worse yet, a believer who finds no issue with a year-long genocide, unending aerial bombardments in civilian centers, and the impending prospect of regional war that will continue to cost untold numbers of lives, is certainly not embodying the principles of his faith fully. In the Sunan of al-Bayhaqi, it is reported that the Prophet ﷺ said that one whose belly is full while his neighbor is starving is not a believer. These and similar reports that say “he is not from us” or “he does not do so as a Muslim” are not a classification of disbelief, but instead a suggestion of deep deficiency in one's faith.

If such stern warnings have been given to caring for those with less, then how could it be possible to make consequential political decisions without any regard for Allah and His Messenger while this brutal genocide of Muslims continues?

To be clear, I am not suggesting that voting for Candidate X or Y is haram or constitutive of iniquity (fisq). What I am suggesting, however, is that, depending on one's intentions and how he is producing his political judgments, it might be a sin, particularly if such decisions are self-interested, callous, and done with abject indifference to the guidance of Allah.

Whether one votes for Harris or not (or votes at all) is ultimately a decision that each person will have to make for himself. I, for one, cannot bring myself to so much as consider a vote for Harris given the decisions her administration has made over the past year in overseeing and enabling the mass slaughter of so many innocent civilians. But if you can, you should at least ask yourself whether you are doing so based on some form of reasoning that you feel comfortable standing in front of Allah with.

Point 2: Does the Politics of Punishment Work?

Hasan’s second objection pertains to the political efficacy of the Abandon Harris strategy which he regards as naive and ill-founded. The argument of those advocating for voting third party includes the idea that the Democratic Party will take Muslims more seriously if they realize that their votes have to be earned. Contra this reasoning, Hasan foresees an ushering in of derision and animosity between the Democratic Party and American Muslims, with the former blaming the latter if indeed Harris loses to Trump this November.

Hasan proceeds to support his case by pointing to the example of Bernie Sanders. After running against Hillary Clinton in 2012, Hasan says that the party did not self-reflect and move to the left in line with Sanders, but instead grew in their opposition to him, nominating Biden in 2016. However, this characterization of both Sanders and the Democratic Party is belied by the facts.

Far from ostracizing Sanders following 2012, much of the DNC leadership embraced the Bernie movement. 2013 witnessed a progressive electoral wave, and by 2016, Sanders was dictating members to the DNC platform committee, leading some to suggest that he was literally “shaping” the Democratic Party. In a 2020 Business Insider piece, Sanders was described as influencing “US politics more than any other failed presidential candidate in the country's history,” with Joe Biden quoted as saying, “Senator Sanders and his supporters have changed the dialogue in America.” After being appointed to lead the Senate Budget Committee, one of the most powerful congressional committees, The Nation profiled Sanders as being “at the apex of his power.” A year later in 2022, Rolling Stone ran a piece describing how the Democratic Party resembled Sanders more than ever.

Similarly, in recent months, the DNC has relied on Sanders and AOC to rally disgruntled supporters. They have gone to bat for President Biden despite his glaring cognitive infirmities and AOC spoke at the DNC from the main stage endorsing a Harris presidency while doing the dirty work of attacking Stein and the Green Party online. If these are the decisions of a party that has outcast Sanders and his progressive wing of the party, then I’m not sure what embracing them would look like.

Of course, Muslims in America lack the political capital of a multiterm congressman like Senator Sanders. And whether or not our votes force the Democrats to adjust their relationship to the community remains to be seen. But the idea that the only possible option before us is permanently gifting the Democratic Party our votes so that they don’t “hate” us (I’m not sure what such “hate” looks like if genocide is not it) is absurd. And if derision and anger follows a Harris loss (which it almost certainly will), the Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves. A Trump presidency will be entirely the fault of Harris and the Democratic Party’s ineptitude, malevolence, and breathtaking stubbornness as millions lose their homes and hundreds of thousands lose their lives in the Middle East.

Point 3: The Trump Bogeyman

Hasan's final objection is his most forceful: Trump is a horrible human being and executive, and his last term inflicted immense damage on the country, thus making the danger of a second term all the more significant. Two specific items are used to anchor this claim, namely, Trump’s COVID-19 track record and the Yemen war.

This section shouldn’t be construed as a defense of Trump. I hardly consider him a good, competent, or productive executive for this country. When it comes to Palestine policy, one should expect him to be indistinguishable from the current administration, and quite possibly worse in many respects. Nevertheless, examining Hasan’s charges is important, particularly insofar as they were instrumentalized to downplay Harris’ role in the Palestinian genocide.

Hasan begins this frame by drawing on Sami Hamdi’s viral appeal to vote for a third party even at risk of another Trump presidency by stating that we did not, in fact, “survive” a Trump presidential term as Hamdi so eloquently claimed. Why? COVID-19 deaths. Hasan cites a study alleging 40% of the 450,000 covid deaths under Trump as avoidable were it not for his incompetence. The problem, of course, is that it is simply untrue. It is untrue not only because the study is exceedingly partisan in character and far too submerged in left wing dogma to be blindly trusted, and not only because it proffers seemingly decisive conclusions on the basis of faulty or otherwise questionable inferences (though it is guilty of both). It is also untrue because the study Hasan so confidently cites says nothing of the sort.

Were Hasan a more diligent researcher, he would know that the 40% deaths concluded as “avoidable” in the study he cited were deduced by a simple comparison: if the US had a life expectancy equal to the weighted average of the remaining G7 nations, then 40% of covid deaths could have been averted per the report (p. 711). The commission further attributed the bungled covid response and high death toll to a degraded public health infrastructure contributed to by decades of reduced healthcare spending, neoliberal policies like mass incarceration and the drug war, and even the colonization of America and persistence of white supremacy. The dishonest claim that Trump is singularly responsible for 180,000 covid deaths is the type of claim only a liberal idealogue would believe at first blush and without further interrogation.

Moreover, if we play the "COVID-19 deaths" blame game, Biden would bear responsibility for over 600,000 deaths during his first year. On this reasoning, have we failed to survive Biden's presidency? 

None of this even begins to deal with the difficult and complicated questions of variegated covid death reporting methods domestically and the radically different methods used to register covid deaths around the world.

Of course, Hasan’s fulmination against Trump does not end there. He goes on to say that Trump committed a genocide under his presidency too. Which one, you ask? Yemen. Hasan says that Trump helped MBS kill tens of thousands of Yemenis in his presidency and is therefore guilty of genocide, making the upcoming election a question of which genocidal candidate you prefer.

This, perhaps, is Hasan’s most malicious argument. It dissembles the genocide carried out by the US and Israel as something that happens all the time, or often enough to make it a seemingly common transgression that spans candidates and presidencies. For Hasan, the term genocide is a fungible, politically expedient weapon to be cynically wielded to one-up his political opponents rather than a reality he fully appreciates as civilizationally wrong.

The question therefore is whether or not the Yemen war, which began in 2015 and has been ongoing, can be classified as a “genocide.” To be sure, many have died in the fight. And although it is beyond the scope of this piece to examine the conflict in considerable detail, a brief survey is necessary to explain the context as context matters a great deal here.

As many may remember, the Arab Spring resulted in the overthrow or radical overhaul of governments throughout the Middle East, and Yemen was no exception. In response to growing protests against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Saleh resigned and transitioned power to his vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in 2012. Instability followed this transition, with growing opposition from the Houthi movement, a Shia military outfit that began seizing territory from the internationally recognized Hadi government. Along the way, human rights organizations recorded various war crimes carried out by the Houthis, including the torture of prisoners, bombing of homes and civil infrastructure, kidnappings, and more.

In September 2014, the Houthi movement overran the capital city of Sanaa, leading to the formation of a technocratic government with broad and diverse representation. Just three months after this agreement, in January 2015, President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, Prime Minister Khalid Bahah, and several cabinet ministers were placed under house arrest, leading to their resignations. The Houthis used this opportunity to dismiss the government and form their own executive body. It is at this point that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other participating coalition members, fearing hostile Iranian influence and expansion along their borders, intervened to restore the Hadi government.

A 2018 UN report “singled out Saudi and Emirati airstrikes for causing the most civilian casualties, saying they had hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, jails, boats and medical facilities,” though it also said the Houthis committed war crimes, including “shelling civilians, torturing detainees, recruiting young children to fight and blocking access to humanitarian agencies.” In Taiz alone, the ACLED reports over 19,000 deaths due to the Houthi siege on the city spanning four years, with over 2,300 fatalities reported from direct civilian targeting. One of the UN investigators commented on the situation in Yemen by saying that “none have clean hands,” further lamenting the “total disregard of the suffering of the people of Yemen.”

Estimates of fatalities vary widely. When accounting for indirect causes, the UN estimates over 300,000 lives lost, while the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project estimates 150,000 fatalities, of which 15,000 are registered as civilian deaths.

The point here is not to downplay the civil strife and humanitarian crisis that has endured since 2015, but to merely point out that the situation is disanalogous to Palestine in many ways. A civil war was precipitated in Yemen largely by factions on the ground, some of whom were beholden to and actively receiving funds and supplies from foreign entities. Though the Saudi/UAE coalition undoubtedly killed indiscriminately and has been credibly accused of war crimes with full US support and armaments (the specifics of which span Obama, Trump, and Biden), so too have other factions and groups, most notably the Houthis and other militia forces.

Unlike Yemen, Palestine – and Gaza in particular – is a small land mass that has been an “open air prison” for decades, the most highly surveilled piece of land on earth, whose entire civilian infrastructure has been razed to the ground since last October. Millions have been displaced while their schools, hospitals, and homes have been destroyed with two thousand pound bombs. The indiscriminate nature of the shelling, the explicit genocidal intent of the Israeli government (with its references to Amalek and all), the gratuitous cruelty, including raping of Palestinian hostages, and various psychosexual escapades captured on video and posted to social media, all while receiving vocal and boisterous cover from the US and much of the Western world, has been distinct in both horrors, casualties, and character. Spanish politician Ione Belarra recently declared in a parliamentary session that Israel is “competing with Nazism” in its “horror for humanity.”

It should be acknowledged that a scholarly case has been made for the Yemen War being classified as a genocide by American University professor Jeff Bachman. Bachman makes this case by significantly broadening the term’s definition to include mental harm, imposing measures to prevent births, and more. However, Bachman acknowledges Yemen doesn't fit the conventional understanding of genocide: “Relative to the generally recognized cases of genocide (Armenia, Jewish Holocaust, Rwanda, etc.), a ‘substantial’ number of Yemenis have not been killed by direct violence.”

The crucial point to bear in mind is that although one can and should fully appreciate the scale of atrocities in Yemen (just as one should in Sudan, China, Burma, and elsewhere), the tack of conflating conflicts is often done disingenuously by eliding critical differences between different domains of human suffering while deliberately treating what is happening to the Palestinians as tragic but commonplace. Worse yet, it dilutes the term “genocide” of any effective meaning, an utterly unconscionable act at a time like this.

Conclusion

Some may question whether a rejoinder of this length was necessary, and if so, why. The specifics are important, of course, as one should be diligent about making public claims, particularly those used to lobby or advance a political choice as preferable and others as unwise. But beyond the specifics of the issues addressed in this piece, there is something more fundamental, a purpose and end to which this disquisition hopes to serve.

That end is to highlight a particular argument that sits at the heart of these discussions. Though Hasan is the latest expositor of it, the argument is invoked frequently by Muslim and non-Muslim politicos beholden to the Democratic Party and disturbed by anti-Harris sentiment. That thinking, stated simply, is that the only serious, viable choice in any given election is the Democratic candidate.

This argument is made irrespective of the opponent. Were Harris running against JD Vance, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, or Chris Christie, the argument would be largely unchanged. If the third parties were not green but instead blue or purple, with a Nobel Prize winning presidential nominee, the argument would continue to insist that although the third party candidate may have many virtues, you are a fool to think a vote for him or her is useful.

If the Democratic nominee was not Harris but instead Chuck Schumer, John Fetterman, or perhaps even someone mired in scandal like Eric Adams, the support would continue to be uniform. If the year was not 2024 but instead 2040 or 2080, we would be told that the election was “the most important one of our lives” and not to “waste our vote” on a third party better aligned with our beliefs and thinking (assuming one existed).

The tactics used to demand conformity would differ, but the intent and message would largely be the same: just as we have an unwavering commitment to the Democratic Party, so too should you.

So dogged is this loyalty that it evinces itself even in the midst of a genocide. So extreme is it that the party will be defended even as they express open derision for us and our community. The argument will be unshaken even as the most paltry ask from the party – a few minutes on a DNC stage, for instance – goes ignored. You are told to expect nothing from the party. They should not be expected to tolerate your college youth who protest on campuses. In fact, you should tolerate the party denouncing your youth as extremists. You should not expect them to push for a ceasefire. You should not expect them to acknowledge war crimes. You should not even expect them to see in your brothers and sisters any humanity.

In the face of this political intransigence and literal support for genocide, we are told to continue to support a single political party and hope – why, exactly, I am not sure – that such long term loyalty is rewarded, much like a man might take pity on a loyal dog by throwing him the occasional bone.

Given all that is at stake, the stubborn refusal to so much as listen to Muslims, to give Palestinians the most trivial opportunities to have a voice and express their grievances, to find a modicum of authentic representation, and on and on and on…the question must be asked: when and under what circumstances would the Democratic Party listen to us? If there is decidedly less at stake, why would they suddenly take interest in Muslims if they have refused to do so in their hour of need, when they have every political incentive to do so?

Worse yet, we are pushed into adhering to this brand of support when it conflicts with our most deeply held beliefs and as our conscience is screaming at us to do otherwise. When our hearts are disturbed by the choice and we feel insecure, preferring that others not know, we are told that it's okay, cast your lot with blue, it’s the right choice. The fault is with everyone else for being so darn judgmental, not you.

Like Hasan, I am not interested in telling people whom to vote for. I have stated clearly that I find the prospect of voting for Harris utterly repugnant. I also cannot stomach the idea of casting a ballot for Donald Trump. But if people ultimately choose either candidate, a third party, or choose not to vote altogether, I do not hold that decision against them. What I do hold against them is how they arrive at that conclusion. I hold against them their willingness to peddle lies and half-truths to forgive or attenuate the gravity of the Biden/Harris genocide of the Palestinians. I hold against people an uncritical ideological commitment to a political tribe such that any flaw is overlooked or papered over come election season. I hold against people a willingness to minimize or set aside the mass slaughter of their brothers and sisters as they are burning in hospitals with IVs in their arms, undergoing major procedures and amputations without anesthetics and dying from the pain, living in squalid, hellish conditions that are under constant surveillance and routinely bombed without warning or reason, and seeing their homes, places of worship, and entire lives destroyed.

In one of the single most important statements ever made, the Prophet ﷺ is reported to have said that deeds are rewarded according to their intention. Every believer must examine his heart with brutal honesty in the coming weeks and decide what he will do on November 5th. In that vein, ensure that your choice prioritizes Allah’s pleasure above all else.

We ask Allah for tawfiq. Amin.

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Other notes:

• Imam Tom Facchine weighs in on the Mehdi Hasan clip, as does Imam Dawud Walid and Muhammad Jalal. Give them a read.

• Glenn Greenwald discusses Zionist GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson’s influence on Trump

• Both the Trump and Harris campaigns are, in a word, anemic. Trump town halls have had to pay attendees to fill out. Harris is declining in the polls and is hoping to win over left leaning voters with a recent pledge to legalize marijuana nationwide. Neither campaign has much enthusiasm or vibrancy.

• The Abandon Harris movement continues to pump out good content. Follow them here.

• Dr. Sharif El-Tobgui delivers the first of a four-part series on homosexuality in Arabic, give it a listen. May Allah reward him with good and make it a benefit to the ummah. Amin.

• Shaykh Furhan Zubairi has been releasing Tafsir videos on the IOK Facebook page. Tafsir of Surat al-Zumar (verses 68-70) can be found here. May Allah reward the work of IOK. Amin.

And Allah Knows Best.