Muhammad Hassan On How Reception To His WWE Character Has Changed Among Middle Eastern Americans

Muhammad Hassan recently shared his thoughts on how the perception of his infamous WWE character has shifted among Middle Eastern Americans. Hassan’s character was incredibly controversial and he spoke with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview, during which he spoke about how the character’s shift impacted how he was viewed and how that has changed in the years since. You can see highlights below:

On how perception of the character has changed: “I think there’s been a shift. I think that initially when the character came out, I think Middle Eastern people in this country felt like they had a representative and then when the character became more controversial and really, the irony of me speaking about not getting a fair chance and then not fighting fair, it started to become more of a caricature and really isolated the character and I think it really alienated the character from Middle Eastern fans in this country because now I’m not just representing them. I’m representing them in a very negative way. I think that a shift, I think that people 20 years later recognize that I was a 23/24-year-old kid. I think people have more sympathy for the fact that you’re not going to turn an opportunity like that down in a position that I was in or anybody was in.

“I also think they recognize the character remains within its time. That character would never exist outside of 2004/2005. Again, if the London bombing didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have made it much further because the nature of the character wasn’t sensitive to begin with. I think my perspective has changed because during the time, I didn’t understand how serious that character was being taken. I mean, I was 24/25, Shawn [Daivari]’s like 12—he was like maybe 19 or 20. We’re kind of living this gimmick and we’re kind of living our dream, traveling, doing all these shows. We know we’re getting heat. We know that there’s people upset.”

On his realizations around the character: “It wasn’t until much later that I realized how insensitive that character was,” he said. “Like I was saying earlier, how that character was being pushed to depict Muslim Americans and Middle Eastern Americans and the things that that character was doing was not representative of them and it wasn’t helping. It was hurting. That’s what I disagreed with with the character, the direction we were going in and that’s when I became vocal about it. Granted, again, I take responsibility for the fact that I played the character. I was doing those things. I’m holding myself accountable.

“But I wasn’t writing the script. I might be saying the words and I might be generating those words, but I definitely wasn’t the one who was creating those storylines and coming up with the ideas that we had come up with. So I’m glad that people recognize that I am not a person trying to deceive and bring down Middle Eastern Americans. I’m glad they recognize it was a character and I hope they appreciate that I played that character well for what it needed to be at the time. Then I hope they really appreciate that that character is gone and it will never come back.”