Usama Hasan
Usama Hasan is a British at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and has described himself as a "a full-time counter-extremism practitioner since 2012". He was also a senior researcher in Islamic Studies at the Quilliam Foundation until it was closed down in April 2021. He is a former senior lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Career
Hasan who comes from an Indo-Pakistani family holds no formal qualifications in Islamic Studies or Arabic language from any Islamic university but states he was taught personally by his father, Suhaib Hasan, who is a Saudi Arabia-trained Islamic scholar, while his grandfather, Abdul-Ghaffar Hasan Al-Hindi, was a scholar as well, having taught at the Islamic University of Medina at the request of the influential Salafi scholar Al-Albani.Jihadist claims
He has claimed that he fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation.Quilliam Foundation
Hasan was Senior Researcher at the Quilliam Foundation, whose activities have been heavily criticised by commentators and academics for their "deplorable work towards the institutionalisation of Islamophobia and the destruction of civil liberties...and the far-right thugs that they have empowered as well as legitimised through their work". During this time Hasan was involved in talks with Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League in which context he stated that "Robinson has always been against Islamism — political Islam — rather than Muslims".British government counter-extremism agenda
Hasan was a member of the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Projecting British Muslims delegations to Egypt in 2008 and to Afghanistan in 2010, was a Keynote Speaker at the Anglo-Syrian government-sponsored conference "The Message of Peace in Islam" in Damascus in 2009, and is a Patron of both the Forum for the Discussion of Israel and Palestine and Friends of the Bereaved Families Forum. Usama was also a speaker at the Google Ideas/Council on Foreign Relations Summit Against Violent Extremism.Media appearances
He has appeared on television programmes, including BBC Hardtalk, CNN, and has also written various columns for The Guardian and The Washington Post.Views and controversies
Hasan has expressed a number of views on Islam which have provoked strong reactions among Muslims and others.Evolution
Hasan has previously argued in favour of a compatibility between Islam and human evolution, arguing the mention of Adam and Eve in the Quran is purely symbolic.Hasan has argued that Islam is compatible with the theory of evolution, describing the story of Adam and Eve as "children's madrasa-level understanding" of human origins while pointing to antecedents of the modern theory of evolution among medieval Muslim philosophers like Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Miskawayh. His lectures have been disrupted by hecklers and has reportedly received death threats.
Hasan later retracted some of his views on evolution. Several British Muslim writers, including Inayat Bunglawala and Yahya Birt, backed his right to free speech. On 5 January 2013, he was featured in a debate against Yasir Qadhi titled Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution?, in which he argued in favor of human evolution.