This is just a stub / holding post for future elaboration. I have an agenda item to address Antisemitism and Islamophobia in mostly-secular Western “Christian culture” (like ours) or ex-colonies elsewhere – where in fact they are pretty much examples of the same issue. We tend to have them as live discussion topics only in reaction to some extreme or violent “terrorism” event or series of events – which polarises the language too quickly to get to any shared understanding.
Prompted to start now thanks to two intellectual inputs overnight.
The first – Mishal Husain and her Oxford Romanes(*) Lecture – “Empire, Identity and the Search for Reason” from 2 weeks ago, 14th October 2025
I was all set to share Mishal’s lecture in its own right this morning, as I tweeted overnight – highly recommended:
Wow! Absolutely beautiful. Picked up that link at 3 in the morning and found myself gripped to the whole. The secularism of public intellect & conversation with private faith & religious identity. And so much more. Will say more …
As I say, worth 45 mins listening before you read on.
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This morning William Hague tweeted his remarks from speaking at the Oxford Chabad Society last night. [Chabad is a system of Jewish Philosophy: “that seeks to understand and recognize God through the intellect, aiming to refine and govern one’s actions and feelings with wisdom, comprehension, and knowledge”.]
When you’ve listened to Mishal you’ll recognise that same aim in Islam:
to refine and govern one’s actions and feelings with wisdom, comprehension, and knowledge
William’s Tweeted remarks quoted here in full, and he quotes one of my heroes, Rabbi Sacks:
It was a privilege to speak at the Oxford Chabad Society about freedom of speech, civility, and the urgent need to confront antisemitism.
Freedom of speech lies at the heart of any great university and of any democracy worth the name.
But it is not, as I said in my remarks, “the freedom to scream your views at somebody.”
It carries the duty to listen.
There is no value in a freedom that is exercised only to make more noise.
The real test of a free society is whether it can tolerate disagreement; whether we can listen to arguments that make us uncomfortable and still meet them with reason and civility.
At Oxford, students should expect to hear things that challenge them and, at times, offend them. Because that is what a university is for: to sharpen the mind, to test conviction against debate, and to learn that truth is not discovered by silencing others. We also discussed the growing threat of antisemitism, which remains, as I said, “a poison seeping deeper and deeper into our society.”
As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warned, antisemitism is never only about Jews. It is a sign of a wider breakdown in the moral and civic health of a country. It begins with Jews, but it never ends there. I expressed my admiration for Oxford’s Jewish students and staff. And I emphasised that Oxford and every university must remain a place where all faiths are protected, debate is free, and hatred finds no home.
Freedom of speech must be recoupled with responsibility. The freedom to speak carries the obligation to listen. The right to protest carries the obligation not to intimidate or prevent others from learning. The right to disagree carries the obligation to do so with civility.
Civility is not weakness. It is the strength that holds a free society together.
Not surprisingly, the comment thread on that Tweet is pure poison, seeing civility as a weakness, and much worse.
Anyway, lots of the usual stuff from me here on Psybertron – freedom comes with responsibility etc. Using free expression to drown out that of others is pure bad-faith [the whole of counter protests to the Let Women Speak movement in Gender Identity is an exemplar.] Nothing to do with debate or public discourse.
“The right to disagree comes with the duty to listen.”
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Anyway, back to Mishal. So many good things to unpick in there.
I often mention the generality and some specifics of the preservation, interpretation and transmission of Greek thought via Islamic scholars to “the West” – most recently when reviewing Brandon Mayfield. Mishal adds more specifics. Not least the choice of language used in many Western translations that disguises their Islamic sources and content.
The emphasis on free intellect and conversation in public understanding and decision-making – secularism – with religious faith as personal and private. And intellect as so much more than Western rationality – the poetics of Rumi, etc.
And so much more …
that “wisdom, comprehension and knowledge” …
is so much “more than science“.
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(*) And George Romanes, after whom the lecture series is named – evolutionary biologist, working with Darwin, who founded comparative psychology – is new to me.
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