The Oxford Union is best known for its high-profile, adversarial debates that focuses on controversial political, religious, and social questions. This format is known for its association free speech and open disagreement. On JUNE 17, 2026, The Oxford Union debated on the motion: “
“This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam”.
The full debate was made available online six week later on July, 31, 2026.
The question posed at the Oxford Union, focused on whether the West is right to be suspicious of Islam, which is a provocative one. This essay argues it demands a precise answer. Islam is not a single political program, nor is it reducible to one uniform system of social thought, and that diversity matters. Yet diversity does not mean that Islam lacks a recognizable theological and normative center. It is a religious system composed of texts, traditions, legal schools, theological movements, political ideologies, and mystical traditions, with enormous diversity among Muslims themselves. Therefore, to say “suspicion of Islam” collapses distinctions that are essential for serious analysis.
Yet, there is also another serious error at play because Western institutions have increasingly become reluctant to examine Islamic teachings, movements, and political claims precisely because criticism of Islam can so easily be represented as hostility toward Muslims. This means free and open inquiry of the teachings of a religion is fair game. So,examining the life and teaching of Muhammad and the Islamic texts should be open to scrutiny, and there should be intellectual freedom to do so. The social pressure that increasingly treats criticism of Islamic doctrines or historical claims as hostility toward Muslims can function as a kind of informal blasphemy law, where statements critical of Islam cannot be made, and that pressure should be resisted. With that said, what must be understood is that there must be a difference between respect for Muslims as people and toward Islam as a system of belief.
Allow me to emphasize an important point: Muslims should enjoy the same dignity, legal protection, religious liberty, and freedom of conscience as every other citizen. But it is important to understand that Muslims and Islam are not the same thing. Muslims are individuals who practice a religion called Islam. Islam, on the other hand, is a religious system that consists of a body of ideas, texts, laws, doctrines, traditions, and historical claims. Like Christianity, Marxism, nationalism, or any other comprehensive worldview, it must remain open to historical, theological, moral, and political criticism. To deny Muslims equal protection would be illiberal, but to place Islamic ideas beyond scrutiny would also be illiberal.
This requires another distinction, however. Islam and Islamism are not identical, but neither are they wholly unrelated. Islamism is a modern political phenomenon, yet many Islamist movements justify their claims through the Qur’an, the example of Muhammad, hadith, classical jurisprudence, and inherited concepts of jihad, political authority, and the status of non-Muslims. The analytical question, therefore, is not simply whether Islamists misuse Islam, but which elements of the Islamic tradition they are retrieving, how historically authoritative those elements have been, and how contemporary Muslims interpret or reject them.
One of Sacerdoti’s strongest points concerns the way violent Islamists explain themselves. The people who orchestrated atrocities like the Rushdie affair, the July 7 bombings, the Manchester Arena attack, September 11, and October 7 did so in the name of Islam. He does say that many Muslims reject this interpretation, but also insists that the perpetrators’ own religious explanations cannot simply be dismissed. This is an important methodological point because ideological actors should be allowed to describe the moral and theological universe in which they understand themselves to be acting. Their self-description does not by itself prove that their interpretation is normative for all Muslims. But neither should their religious vocabulary be treated as camouflage for motivations that Western observers regard as more intellectually respectable.
This is precisely why the life and teaching of Muhammad and the canonical sources must be seriously examined without the need to sanitize them. To opt for contextualization on every controversial text and tradition is hermeneutical malpractice. Western explanations often opt for preferred categories established by secular sociology, such as marginalization, racism, poverty, alienation, colonialism, foreign policy, identity crisis, or psychological vulnerability. But these categories can become methods of avoiding what the text actually say. Consequently, several areas need to be examined such as why the Islamist ideology creates categories of grievance, how it identifies an enemy, how and why it authorizes violence, how it defines sacrifice, and how it establishes religious legitimacy and promises transcendent reward.
This insistence that Islam has nothing to do with their actions shields religious ideology from serious analysis. Before I examine this debate, I need to show that it was not an isolated incident. On November 28, 2024 the Oxford Union held a debate on Israel and the Palestinians. The motion was:
“This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.”
The motion passed 278–59. During the debate, Miko Peled said that October 7 was “not terrorism” but an acts of “heroism.” On the other side, intimidation tactics were employed as Jonathan Sacerdoti, who participated in both debates, and other opposition speakers encountered repeated heckling. During Sacerdoti’s remarks, one audience member reportedly called him a “genocidal maniac” and used profanity toward him before being removed. Yoseph Haddad, one of the speakers, was also removed from the chamber.
I remember watching the debate on YouTube in astonishment, and that reaction pushed me to dig deeper into the rhetoric that went completely unchallenged inside that chamber. Since I spoke at Oxford at a Christian sponsored campus event that year before, I made a call to my contact and asked him to put me in touch with one of the Oxford Union members. The member I spoke to said that it was much worse outside of the event than inside. I asked him about the chairperson of the Oxford Union and he said that his tenure was almost up but they had already voted for the next person, who, he said, was just as radical.
This brings me to the rhetoric used in the debate that occurred in June . Aisha Khan Aziz, one of the student speakers, argued that Muslims were not the danger. The phrasing here is worth noting: she said, “There is a crowd outside rioting against you tonight and without the protection and generosity of a Muslim Palestinian president and a mostly South Asian executive committee, um, you would be quite literally cooked.” The rhetorical structure of her argument is indeed striking. The audience is told, in effect, that without the benevolence of Muslim and South Asian leaders, they might be physically harmed. Her words creates a subtle moral dhimmitude-like hierarchy in which Jews appear as vulnerable recipients of Muslim protection and therefore potentially indebted to those providing it. What deserved examination was the disturbing fact that the possibility of anti-Jewish violence could be invoked so casually while simultaneously being used to mock concerns about the ideological environment from which such hostility might emerge.
That evidence alone doesn’t offer conclusive evidence of systemic antisemitism, but there is more evidence that strengthens the case. For example, the fact that on May 2024 an open letter from Oxford students, faculty, academics, staff, and alumni documenting 75 alleged antisemitic incidents affecting Jewish and Israeli members of the university makes the case much more clear. The incidents reportedly included antisemitic comments by students and staff, antisemitic language and imagery on university-related social-media platforms, harassment, and conspiratorial narratives. The signatories described a “frightening climate” and said some contributors remained anonymous because they feared victimization.
There were also specific physical and symbolic incidents. Cherwell reported antisemitic graffiti at Regent’s Park College in 2024, alongside allegations of an antisemitism problem at St Hugh’s College serious enough that a JCR vice-president resigned. Later that year, the Union of Jewish Students and Oxford Jewish Society said that a Jewish student space had been vandalized with a swastika. They also pointed to protest slogans including “globalize the intifada” and “from Oxford to Gaza, long live the intifada,” as well as demonstrators telling visiting speakers that “Zionists are not welcome in Oxford.”
The proper response should not be suspicion of Muslims but suspicion about how Islam is understood and practiced on the Oxford campus. The relevant question is whether particular interpretations of Islam are being used to legitimize antisemitism, hostility toward Zionism, intimidation of dissenting voices, or the romanticizing of movements committed to Israel’s destruction. If so, those interpretations should be examined openly and critically, just as any Christian, nationalist, Marxist, or political ideology would be. Protecting Muslims from prejudice should never require shielding Islamic ideas from scrutiny, especially when those ideas intersect with hostility toward Jews or the denial of Jewish self-determination.
Endnotes
David Cook, Understanding Jihad, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015).
Oxford Union, “THB the West Is Right to Be Suspicious of Islam—Full Debate,” debate held June 17, 2026, YouTube video, 2:37:29, accessed August 13, 2026,
Cherwell News, “Oxford Union Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide,” Cherwell, November 29, 2024, https://cherwell.org/2024/11/29/oxford-union-believes-israel-is-an-apartheid-state-responsible-for-genocide/.
Yunzhang Liang, Peter Lenahan, and Cameron Samuel Keys, “Ex-IDF Soldier and Former Spy for Israel among Surprise Speakers at Union Palestine Debate,” The Oxford Student, November 29, 2024, https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2024/11/29/ex-idf-soldier-and-former-spy-for-israel-among-surprise-speakers-at-union-palestine-debate/.
Independent Reporters, “Tommy Robinson in Surprise Apology to Muslim Student Targeted by Online Hate Campaign,” The Independent, August 7, 2026, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tommy-robinson-apology-muslim-student-oxford-union-islam-debate-b3028577.html.
Gaspard Rouffin and Martin Alfonsin Larsen, “Open Letter to Vice-Chancellor Describes ‘Frightening Climate’ of Antisemitism in Oxford,” The Oxford Student, May 16, 2024, https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2024/05/16/open-letter-to-vice-chancellor-describes-frightening-climate-of-antisemitism-in-oxford/.
“Oxford since 7/10—Open Letter,” last updated May 27, 2024, accessed August 13, 2026, https://sites.google.com/view/openletteroxford/open-letter.
Rebecca Whalley, “Regent’s Park Principal Addresses Antisemitism Incident on Site,” The Oxford Student, May 23, 2024, https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2024/05/23/regents-park-principal-addresses-antisemitism-incident-on-site/.
Éilis Mathur, “St Hugh’s JCR Vice-President Resigns Due to the College’s ‘Antisemitism Problem,’” Cherwell, May 27, 2024, https://cherwell.org/2024/05/27/st-hughs-jcr-vice-president-resigns-due-to-the-colleges-antisemitism-problem/.
Nicola Woolcock and Georgia Lambert, “Oxford Union Accused of Breaking the Law during Israel Debate,” The Times, December 4, 2024, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/academics-claim-oxford-union-broke-law-during-israel-debate-clhcz89sl.