Mehdi Hasan

Mehdi Raza Hasan (born 10 July 1979) is a British-American broadcaster, journalist and author, and the founder of the media company Zeteo. A former New Statesman and HuffPost UK politics editor and an Al Jazeera English presenter (Head to Head, UpFront), he hosted The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC until its cancellation in 2023, and wrote Win Every Argument (2023). ¹

Hasan was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, on 10 July 1979 to Shia Muslim parents from Hyderabad in Telangana, India; his father is an engineer and his mother a doctor. ^{1 2} He grew up in Harrow, in north-west London, was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, and read philosophy, politics and economics at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 2000. ¹ The Arabic Wikipedia's biographical text describes Hasan himself as a Twelver Shia Muslim, and cites his own published post of 13 August 2021, which opens with the words "I'm a Shia Muslim". ³ An independent profile on YesPress likewise states that he identifies as a Twelver Shia Muslim and has been open about that faith throughout his career. ⁴ He became a naturalised citizen of the United States on 9 October 2020. ¹

Hasan began in television as a researcher on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, produced for the BBC's Politics Show, and became deputy executive producer of Sky News's Sunrise before joining Channel 4 as editor of news and current affairs. ¹ In 2009 he became senior politics editor of the New Statesman, and then political editor of the UK edition of The Huffington Post. ¹ He joined Al Jazeera English as a presenter in 2012, hosting The Café and Head to Head, and in 2015 moved to Washington to host UpFront; from 2018 to 2020 he also hosted The Intercept's Deconstructed podcast. ¹ In 2013 he won the Oxford Union debate on the motion that Islam is a religion of peace. ¹ The Mehdi Hasan Show launched on Peacock in October 2020 and moved to MSNBC in February 2021; MSNBC cancelled it in November 2023, and his final broadcast was in January 2024. ¹ In February 2024 he founded the digital media company Zeteo, joined The Guardian as a columnist, and returned as host of Head to Head. ⁴ He co-authored a biography of Ed Miliband and is the author of Win Every Argument (2023). ¹

• The source entities cited above, registered under data/source/.