Shows
Gulf PodsWar on women, war on liberty?In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges Naomi Wolf, one of the world's best-known feminists and author of the seminal book The Beauty Myth, on where the feminist movement is headed, and whether her controversial latest writings are furthering or undermining the cause of women's rights. Wolf vigorously defends her latest book Vagina: A New Biography, in which she argues, "to understand the vagina properly is to realize that it is not only coextensive with the female brain, but is also, essentially, part of the female soul." The book has been labelled as 'essentialist', 'narcissistic...
2021-02-1047 min
Gulf PodsWho rules Pakistan?In this episode of Head to Head , Mehdi Hasan challenges Hina Rabbani Khar, former foreign minister of Pakistan, on whether the army is in control of the country, and if Pakistan has been supporting the Taliban. Joining the discussion are: Omar Waraich, an award-winning British journalist and former Pakistan correspondent for Time Magazine; Humeira Iqtidar, Pakistani Senior Lecturer in Politics of South Asia at King's College London and author of Secularising Islamists? Mosharraf Zaidi, former advisor to Foreign Minister Rabbani Khar as well as the EU and UN.
2021-02-0647 min
Gulf PodsDawkins on religion: Is religion good or evil?With the headlines covering fanaticism, fundamentalism, superstition and ignorance, religion is getting a bad press these days. And much of the conflict in the world, from the Middle East to Nigeria and Myanmar, is often blamed on religion. But how are things from a different perspective? Some defenders of religion claim Adolf Hitler was an atheist. Communism under Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Zedong banned religion, but also massacred millions. And science brought incredible and amazing advances, but also pollution and the atomic bomb. A critic of religious dogmatism, Professor Richard Dawkins revolutionised genetics in 1976 with...
2021-02-0547 min
Gulf PodsPakistan: Victim or exporter of terrorism?"They deluded themselves in believing that they were allies. Actually, they were not," says former Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. General Asad Durrani, commenting on Pakistan's rocky relationship with the United States since they allied in the "War on Terror". In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges General Durrani on whether Pakistan is fighting or fuelling international terrorism. We explore the nation's role as a US ally in the "War on Terror", and investigate claims that it has been backing the Afghan Taliban, whilst its offshoot, the Pakistani Taliban, wages a brutal...
2021-02-0447 min
Gulf PodsUS healthcare: A cure worse than disease?In this episode, Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with two guests with opposing views. In part one, he challenges Lanhee Chen, chief architect of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign. Chen argues that "the employer-sponsored system ... has been the linchpin of a quality system of care we have in the US". And in part two, Hasan debates Bernie Sanders surrogate and health policy expert Abdul El-Sayed. "I don't want to live in a society where any of my neighbours … have to potentially go bankrupt because they got sick ... and that's what we have here in th...
2021-02-0248 min
Gulf PodsWill the internet set us free?"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge," says Jimmy Wales about his brainchild Wikipedia, the non-for-profit crowd-sourced online encyclopedia. But as internet freedoms are besieged by mass surveillance, can his project survive? In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan questions Jimmy Wales, one of the world’s most renowned internet gurus, on his future plans, on whether Wikipedia is advancing or degrading our knowledge, and on whether liberty, privacy and security can coexist in an online era. So, is...
2021-02-0247 min
Gulf PodsImmigration: How much is too much?In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges Sir Paul Collier, the former head of Development Research at the World Bank, author of Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism, and professor at Oxford University, on the costs and benefits of migration. Collier tells Hasan that he is not "advocating stopping migration" but that "too much diversity" leads to an erosion of cooperation in societies that "shows up in much lower levels of trust". We explore whether increased migration threatens social cohesion, and ask: Does emigration help or hurt developing countries? Are stricter border controls needed? And what...
2021-02-0247 min
Gulf PodsAnti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Old fears, new threats?In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges Robert S. Wistrich, one of the world's leading scholars of anti-Semitism, on why he thinks criticism of Israeli policies is a modern manifestation of historical anti-Jewish hatred. Is anti-Zionism a new form of anti-Semitism? Are boycotts driven by prejudice or principle? And is a criticism of the Palestinians and the Muslim world Islamophobic? In front of the Oxford Union audience, and with the help of an expert panel, we discuss the complex relationship between legitimate criticism of Israel and illegitimate racism. Joining this discussion are: • Ha...
2021-02-0147 min
Gulf PodsTime to boycott Israel?"Prospects have never been better for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict," argues Norman Finkelstein, the controversial scholar and author of The Holocaust Industry and Method and Madness. But after more violence, yet another round of failed talks and 20 years of Israeli land annexation, is the two-state solution really still an option? In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges Norman Finkelstein on his proposal for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, and explores whether he has changed his tone on some of his more incendiary criticism of Israel. Once described as an 'American Radical', Finkelstein...
2021-01-3147 min
Gulf PodsShould the West end its wars?A decade of Western interventions in the Middle East is coming to an end. But is the West leaving behind better countries than they found? Or were their campaigns total fiascos? Nicknamed Darth Vader by his men and Macho Jacko by the British tabloid press, General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British army, says the West did not always achieve its objectives, but will not admit failure.
2021-01-3047 min
Gulf PodsIsraeli settlers: Patriots or invaders?A UN report says Israeli settlements violate human rights and could be prosecuted as war crimes, but many Israeli settlers consider themselves patriots. So what hope is there for peace in the Middle East? In a country where settlers are now one of the biggest and strongest political movements, Dani Dayan, a Netanyahu advisor and the outgoing chairman of the Yesha (Settlers) Council, says there is no two-state solution to the conflict and that he is happy with the status quo. Dayan has been a major in the Israeli army, a successful IT entrepreneur, and a University...
2021-01-2947 min
Gulf PodsDo Arab men hate women?"Why do they hate us?" With these five words in a controversial magazine article, Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy shot to fame, unleashing a devastating critique of women’s rights in the Arab world. In the season premiere of Head to Head , Mehdi Hasan challenges Eltahawy on her views regarding the status of women in Arab states. Are Arab or Muslim societies inherently patriarchal? And how does the narrative of Islam as sexist play into geo-politics and Western stereotypes of the Middle East? Joining the discussion is Dr Aitemad Muhanna of the London School of Economics.
2021-01-2947 min