Developed out of that crisis was the claim that Imam Hasan al-ʿAskari had secretly fathered a son. This son, it was claimed, was living in occultation: concealed from public view but still very much alive and properly serving as Imam. What is fascinating about this claim is not merely that it managed to endure. It is how the claim eventually developed. Slowly, occultation helped transform the Imamate from a principle of legitimate succession revolving around ʿAli’s descendants. It became fully integrated into Shiʿi ideas about how humanity receives divine salvation. The once tentative solution to a crisis of leadership became a comprehensive explanation for how the law, religious authority, and community life could survive in the Imam’s physical absence.

What makes occultation historically significant is how theologians transformed a succession crisis into a durable theological system. Shiʿism did not get around the crisis by declaring the Imam physically unnecessary. Rather, it got around the crisis by building a theological framework in which the Imam could be absolutely necessary without being ordinarily accessible. Shiʿi theologians therefore had to explain how the Imam could remain necessary even when believers could no longer reach him.

The Crisis That Forced Theology to Develop

It would be a mistake to read back the final form of the occultation doctrine into the ninth century. When developed in later centuries, Twelver theology understands the occultation as follows: there was (and is) a twelfth Imam. He went into occultation, communicated with the community through agents for a time, then stopped communicating through agents, and will one day return as qaʾim or the Mahdi. But this full theology was not yet in place at the time of Hasan al-ʿAskari’s death. Rather, Arjomand reconstructs a lengthy process in which ideas that were originally intended as chiliastic responses were integrated into systematic theology and law. (Chiliastic means related to the belief in a coming thousand-year period of divine rule or earthly peace, often associated with the Messiah’s reign.)

The reason that succession could produce such a theological development was because of the Imam’s role in earlier Imami thought. Summarizing his argument at one point, Arjomand describes the Imams as charismatic figures, authoritative teachers, and figures at the center of a “religious economy” structured by divine guidance. During the centuries before the occultation doctrine developed, their role had made each of their deaths a potential crisis point because it reopened the question of who was to legitimately take their place. Hasan al-ʿAskari’s death triggered the most severe of these crises due to the lack of apparent successor.

However, during the Imams’ lives an embryonic clerical structure had started to take shape around them. Earlier Imams had begun appointing agents to represent them in different regions who would collect donations and communicate religious guidance. Over time these agents gained greater autonomy from their patrons. Arjomand refers to the resulting clerical network as a “nascent hierarchy of the learned.” Even the disappearance of the Imam did not fatally undermine this group. Over time it would come to form the most stable component of a clerical hierarchy that carried on without him.

There was, however, still an intellectual problem. If it was still necessary for the Imam to teach, to judge, to set things right, or to lead the community, what did it mean that he no longer publicly fulfilled these functions? How could the divine guidance he was supposed to provide continue if he ceased to provide it? The Imam’s absence raised a much more challenging question than simply determining whether he had indeed secretly appointed a successor. How could he be considered necessary for religious life if it was possible to continue without him?

It was this question that pushed theologians to refine their understanding of the Imam’s absence. Of course, Shiʿi theologians were not manufacturing doctrines to suit their needs. Arjomand dates the emergence of a distinct theological interpretation of occultation to around 900 CE, with its rational and legal explanations unfolding over the next century. The first thinkers to approach the problem in a distinctly theological way were Abu Sahl al-Nawbakhti and Ibn Qiba al-Razi. Both of these thinkers started disconnecting occultation from its chiliastic origins and placing it in a rational theological context.

Turning Rupture into Sacred History

One response to this crisis was to embed occultation in a larger story about sacred history. Collections of traditions were compiled about why God must always have an Imam, why there were twelve Imams, previous instances of the hiddenness of prophecy, expectations about the occultation of the qaʾim, and hopes for the continued existence of God’ proof (ḥujjat Allāh) even while that proof was occult. Armed with these traditions, believers could transform what might otherwise have seemed catastrophic. Rather than signaling an end to divine guidance, what looked like a breakdown in the system could be made to fit within a larger narrative about how God had been leading humanity all along.

One figure who was especially important for this development was Ibn Babuya. Arjomand details how Ibn Babuya created comparisons between the hiddenness of the Imam and the hiddenness or cessation of prophecy. Just as the sealing of prophecy with Muhammad had not caused prophetic guidance to disappear from religious life, so too the occultation of the Imam need not signal the end of the Imamate. By understanding these events as analogous to one another, the Imam could still “have a real place in the history of salvation” even while remaining occult.

A religious tradition faces a serious crisis when events appear to contradict what it claims about God’s activity in history. Rather than producing anxiety, the “event can now be explained.” Arjomand calls this process rationalization: constructing ‘a meaningful conceptual world’ in which previously disruptive events could be explained.

The Theodicy of the Hidden Imam

Even this solution did not resolve a deeper theological dilemma. If God was just and wanted humanity to have divinely sanctioned guidance, then how could the divinely sanctioned leader become hidden? This was all the more perplexing because the Imam was not simply one teacher among many. He instantiated a feature of the cosmos through which divine guidance was thought to extend throughout history.

Arjomand quite rightly refers to the developed theological response to this dilemma as theodicy. The problem is not so much evil itself but the disconnect between divine justice, the ongoing need for guidance, and the hiding of the individual through whom guidance had previously been ensured. Ibn Babuya had begun to speak of occultation along these lines. Rationalist theologians would expand upon this notion in more rigorous terms. Framed in this way, the occultation of the Imam ceased to be solely a question about who the Imam was and became a question about the faithfulness and justice of God.

The later theological answer made use of ideas only developed through rigorous debate with Muʿtazilite theology, namely, the notions of divine Justice and divine Grace. God could not ask human beings to do that which was impossible, and divine Grace mandated that human beings be given enough guidance to meet their moral responsibilities. What al-Shaykh al-Mufid was able to do was marry these theories to the Shii principle of an infallible Imam. This allowed theologians to argue that the Imam’s occultation did not undermine God’s continuing government through divine law.

Mufid solved another problem as well. Placing the burden of occultation on God had implied that something had gone awry with divine justice. God appointed the Imam, and if the Imam could not be accessible, then God was not meeting the needs that He had designed humanity to have. By arguing that God had done His part by appointing the Imam, Mufid shifted responsibility for the occultation’s effects onto human beings. Persecution, oppression, and disobedience might make it impossible for the Imam to appear publicly, but that failure was now purely human. Arjomand highlights Mufid’s discussion of occultation-induced legal and political chaos as the fault of humanity, which had forced the Imam to hide, rather than a fault of the divine order itself. It followed that God remained faithful despite the Imam’s absence.

Because accessibility did not equate to provision, divine guidance was not defeated when the bearer of that guidance withdrew from public view. Divine guidance still existed, even when historical circumstances prevented believers from receiving it directly from the Imam. The world was not guidedless but guided under conditions of hiddenness. What appeared as theological failure could be blamed on the corruption of history rather than the failings of God.

From the Imam’s Presence to the Law’s Presence

Occultation also changed what the Imamate meant. Ibn Babuya’ theological reconstruction increasingly moved the hidden Imam beyond the pressing historical question of whether or not a son of Hasan al-ʿAskari had indeed survived. The Imam increasingly became part of the unseen proof of God, and the cosmic guarantor through which divine guidance and salvation remained meaningful in the world. Arjomand describes this development as “alter[ing] the Imamate from a theory primarily concerned with authority into a theological principle inscribed within Shiʿi economy of salvation.”

The later rationalist theologians further pushed this argument in another way. Legal theorists like Mufid, al- Sharif al-Murtada, and al- Shaykh al- Tusi connected the ongoing necessity of the Imam to the ongoing validity of the Sacred Law itself. The Imam was necessary as the infallible guardian of that normative order, but the normative order itself no longer required his personal administration to remain valid. Law, interpretation, and moral obligation could continue under occultation.

While the Imam himself had not been rendered unnecessary, his physical presence had been rendered unnecessary for day-to-day assurance of the validity of the religious order. Arjomand refers to the resultant theology as a “nomocratic theology,” one which allows “religious law and belief” to maintain their effect despite “physical” obstruction by the Imam’s absence. In occultation, the Imam was therefore able to continue to serve as the ultimate theological guarantor of a religious system that had learned to operate without him.

This helps explain why occultation could endure for centuries. A religion cannot maintain a community for centuries if every legal pronouncement and moral obligation is perpetually placed on hold in anticipation of its leader’s imminent return. By making divine law continuously operative even in the absence of the Imam, and by retaining the hidden Imam as the continuing proof and guarantor of divine law, Twelver theology allowed its followers to carry on with their religious lives without divorcing themselves from the Imam.

From Emergency to Epoch

Occultation reordered how the community thought about time as well. Twelver tradition eventually came to differentiate between a time, when it was still possible to communicate with the occulted Imam via legitimate deputies, and the time after communication had irreversibly ceased upon the death of his final agent in 941 CE. Arjomand references both sets of traditions, those dealing with two distinct occultations and those that locate the end of communication with the Imam in the death of the final representative. What had begun as an unresolved interruption gradually became a defined period of sacred history.

This change allowed uncertainty to become chronology. The faithful were now able to conceive of themselves as living during a specific time between the manifest Imamate and the qaʾim’s eventual return. Time passing no longer necessarily counted as evidence against the doctrine. An extended absence had become something built into the system. What started as a state of emergency could be understood as an age.

Adding to this, Abbas Amanat observes that the Mahdi’s return could not be realistically expected to occur at any particular time. This encouraged a comparatively quietist trend within orthodox Twelver thought following the Greater Occultation. Religious scholars and jurists could therefore build institutions meant to endure without claiming that those institutions represented the final stage of history. Quietism was never total, and millenarian expectations would emerge from the population at regular intervals, but the indefinite nature of the situation allowed for law and religious scholarship to constitute the normal means by which religious life was conducted.

Occultation did much more than answer the question of where the twelfth Imam had gone. When he disappeared from history, Shiʿi thinkers were forced to articulate just how divine guidance would continue to operate on earth. Their solution made the rupture of sacred history, divine absence into a theodicy, and the physical departure of the Imam into a theological framework that could support religious life for generations. We might say that Twelver Shiʿism didn’t just learn how to wait for the Imam. It learned how to live with him.

Bibliography

Amanat, Abbas. Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shiʿism. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.

———. “Islam in Iran v. Messianic Islam in Iran.” Encyclopaedia Iranica 14, no. 2 (2007): 130–134. Updated April 5, 2012.

Arjomand, Saïd Amir. “The Consolation of Theology: Absence of the Imam and Transition from Chiliasm to Law in Shiʿism.” The Journal of Religion 76, no. 4 (October 1996): 548–571.

Evangelical Christians are said to be Israel’s most ardent supporters among religious groups in the United States. With some notable exceptions, however, comparatively few evangelical colleges and universities have taken seriously the study of Judaism, Jewish history, antisemitism, and Israel itself as part of their academic fabric. Evangelicals love Israel politically, devotionally, and at prophecy conferences. They have been far less willing to engage with Israel theologically and intellectually in ways that seriously shape the education their students receive. When an evangelical university seeks to do exactly that—and does it well—it warrants attention. The King’s University in Southlake, Texas is one such place.

Not content merely to sign statements of solidarity or sponsor occasional trips to Israel, The King’s University has integrated programs, courses, and theological convictions that embed Israel, Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations, and even antisemitism into the academic mission of the school. Political support, however, can always remain shallow, reactive, or contingent upon circumstance. What The King’s University is trying to build, however, goes deeper. The school is attempting to place Christian concern for the Jewish people on both an institutional and theological footing.

Describing itself as “Accredited. Spirit-filled. Evangelical.” The King’s University has carved out an extensive Messianic Jewish Studies program within that identity. The purpose of that program, according to the school’s literature, is to prepare both Messianic Jewish leaders and Christian leaders who can serve as “culturally sensitive bridges” between the Church and the Jewish people. Built into what now is the school’ s Messianic Jewish Studies program (established in 2007 at the vision of The King’ s University founder Jack Hayford) is a Cambridge trained New Testament scholar and Jewish-studies expert as its rabbi. But perhaps most important of all to understand about the university’ s theological statement is its stance on replacement theology as it pertains to the Jewish people. Rabbi David Rudolph heads up that program these days..

In view of the present continuity between Israel and the Jewish people, God did not disown Israel in the arrival of Jesus. Quite the contrary, the theological appendix to the school’ prayer of entreaty openly denounces substitution theology and declares that the Jewish people still stand in relation to God through the eternal covenant He made with Abraham, and that God’ gifts and call to Israel are without repentance. The school therefore interprets Israel’ calling as being still ongoing: the Jewish people have a unique covenantal identity and vocation, and God has further plans for them in His plan of salvation. Put succinctly, at King’s, the Jews are still Jews. They do not cease to be Jews because they are incorporated into the Messiah, nor has the Church replaced Israel in God’s plan as his chosen people to whom the covenant promises were made.

Israel Begins With Theology

Christian support for Israel is vulnerable to becoming political long before it gets theological. Debate tends to turn quickly to topics like elections, settlements, Gaza, American foreign policy, or the decision making of the current Israeli government. Those questions are important, but they flow downstream from a theological question. Before Christians debate what they think about Israeli policy, they need to ask what they believe about the Jewish people.

A lot rides on how Christians answer that question, which is why The King’ University addresses it directly in its formal theological statement, The Church and the Jewish People. In this document, the university articulates Christianity’s profound indebtedness to the Jewish people, rejects supersessionism, and affirms God’s gifts and calling to Israel remain irrevocable. It also states frankly that Christian history is marked by hostility toward Jews, and Christian theology has sometimes been used to marginalize and persecute them. That self-reflection combined with affirmation gives this statement more moral weight than political declaration would.

It matters that this theological clarification comes before political affirmation, because Christian love for Jews is not the same thing as a theology that affirms their continuing covenantal role. Anti-supersessionism is not a requirement for being friendably disposed toward Jews. Quite the opposite: philosemitism can and does exist within explicitly supersessionist theological frameworks. That is part of what makes The King’s University statement interesting. In it, they try to move beyond friendly feelings toward Jews to develop a post-supersessionist theology that takes Jewish continuity into account.

To be clear, this does not imply that supersessionism leads directly to antisemitism. Christian antisemitism has arisen in interaction with a wide variety of social, political, economic, racial, and theological factors that varied dramatically over time and place. Supersessionism nevertheless eradicates the Jewish people’s continuing corporate election and vocation from the narrative of redemption in Christian theology. This can allow more room for living Jews to be marginalized. It does not necessarily lead to hostility, but allowed for Jewish displacement and marginalization for many centuries.

Importantly, the university’s theological statement also recognizes Jewish self-determination and historic ties between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. They affirm Jewish sovereignty in the State of Israel while acknowledging room for debate (as any responsible institution should) about the policies of any particular Israeli administration. Affirming Jewish self-determination is not the same thing as saying Israeli political leaders cannot do anything wrong.It does not mean, however, embracing the belief that God’s chosen people are irrelevant to his redemptive plan. It does not mean that we view the church as having replaced Israel and thereby blotting the Jewish people off the theological map. Far from it. To believe that God has a people called Israel today is NOT to subscribe to Christian supersessionism.

The Question Beneath the Politics

Which brings me to explain why this matters for evangelical Christianity. Support for Israel tends to overlap with political conservatism among Christians, and that overlap has led to real and important alliances. My concern is that such alliances are not necessarily eternal. Political coalitions shift, generations pass, and foreign-policy agendas evolve. If our support for Israel and identification with the Jewish people hinges chiefly on Republican administrations in Washington, then we will struggle to sustain that solidarity when politicians change. Solidarity with Jews will ebb like the administrations that prop it up.

The answer lies much closer to home than partisan politics or end-times prophecy. Christianity wasn’t just Jewish in the way that Christianity happened to emerge from Judaism. Rather, Jesus was a Jewish man; the apostles were Jewish men; the Church in its infancy was Jewish; and Christianity received Scripture from Israel. The Jewish people are woven into the story of Christianity more fundamentally than that.

Which is why Paul’ analogy in Romans 11 becomes so pointed when he addresses Gentile Christians. Describing the Gentiles as branches of a cultivated olive tree, Paul instructs us not to “boast against the branches.” Such language is careful not merely because Christians were once Jewish. Paul tells Christians who are Gentiles that we do not sustain the root, we are sustained by the root. In that passage, Paul puts Gentile Christianity in its place.

Universities declare their convictions in many ways, but nowhere more meaningfully than in their curricula. Universities can easily pass a resolution or express solidarity with Israel when she faces international pressure. Universities can hardly teach anything unless they have built courses, degree programs, faculty competencies, and academic expectations around those interests. Curriculum gives texture and discipline to professed convictions.

That’s why The King’’s has curriculum deserves attention. Students do not encounter Israel merely as an occasional topic within otherwise generic biblical courses. Instead, they’ll study antisemitism, the Holocaust, Jewish history, Judaism, the land and modern State of Israel, Jewish-Christian relations, and the Jewish context of the New Testament. Courses cover current issues of antisemitism, such as anti-Zionism and its connection to anti-Jewish hatred, enabling students to understand the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and efforts to destroy Jewish collective rights.

One doesn’t have to take a course inventory to appreciate what matters about all this. What matters most is that King’s curriculum presumes that Christians should learn about Judaism as Judaism rather than reading about Jews only in Christian Scripture. It presumes that Christians should understand the history of antisemitism including churches’ contributions to it. It also presumes that students should approach Israel historically, politically, and theologically.

If Christians want to take a public stance in defense of Jewish dignity, opposition to antisemitism, and affirmation of Jewish national self-determination, they ought to know what they are defending and why. That means knowing Jewish history, Zionism, Christian antisemitism, what Judaism actually teaches, and the facts and history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To take a public stance on these issues also means knowing how to tell the difference between legitimate political criticism and antisemitic political rhetoric. Christian Zionism without education is helpless to make those distinctions or to engage genuine criticism.

A Degree Devoted to Antisemitism

Maybe the most obvious sign of the university’ s commitment comes in the form of its Master of Practical Theology concentration in Antisemitism and Jewish Advocacy. Most Christian institutions of higher education don’t have anything like it. The fact that King’s does indicates an institutional belief that antisemitism is serious enough to warrant advanced study at the graduate level. Moreover, it implies a belief that Christian opposition to antisemitism ought to create trained leaders rather than simply firing off occasional public statements.

Students in the program learn about antisemitism historically, theologically, and as it exists in public life today. They study the Holocaust. They learn about modern antisemitism, Jewish-Christian relations, and how to combat antisemitism in both the Church and wider culture. These subjects are paired with study of the history of Judaism, the Jewish people, Christian Zionism, and the land and State of Israel. Antisemitism isn’t treated as some aberrational hatred in need only of correction. It is a problem that future church leaders need historical knowledge, theological understanding, and skills in public engagement to address.

This point is crucial because so much historic Christian antisemitism was sustained not just by brutish racial hatred but by theology. For centuries, interpretations of scripture that cast the Jewish people as rejected, cursed, obsolete, or otherwise surpassed by Christianity furnished Christians with theological categories through which social contempt could bloom. To reject antisemitism, Christians may need to change both their attitudes toward Jews and the theological frameworks that once made Jewish marginalization seem blessedly natural. It seems King’s understands the relationship between the two.

More Than Being “Pro-Israel”

Asking theological questions also means that affirmation is not the end of thinking about these issues. Christian commitment to the eternal significance of the Jewish people does not require uncritically accepting every decision made by the Israeli government as just, wise, or above criticism. Christians should still be able to criticize Israeli policies while fighting antisemitism and affirming Jewish national self-determination. Serious attention to this topic should help Christians sort out those categories, not conflate them.

Whether evangelical colleges and universities are currently “pro-Israel” is not the only interesting question to me. The more important question is whether evangelical colleges and universities have a theology that explains why Jewish people matter in light of Christ’s coming. If they do not have such a theology, then whatever solidarity Christians feel toward Jews now will fade when politics change, when older generations die off, or when theological trends move in different directions. If they do have such a theology, then concern for the Jewish people will stop being optional or peripheral in Christian education.

The King’s University is putting their theological money where their mouth is by making concern for Jews a permanent part of their university. They have taken what might otherwise be just rhetoric and put it into degrees, course offerings, theological explanations, and organizational budgets. Ultimately, whether or not evangelicals are friends with Jews will not be measured by how loudly Christians speak up for Israel when it is politically popular to do so. Friends will be demonstrated by whether or not Christian theology can still remember and explain who the Jewish people are when doing so is no longer politically convenient.

There is one aspect of Muslim-Jewish relations history that stands out as odd but which is one of the keys to modern Islamic antisemitism. On one hand, if Islamic antisemitism is simply rooted in Islam’s foundational texts then we have to ask why Jew-hatred has not been politically central to Muslim history during all fourteen centuries since Muhammad? On the other hand, if modern Islamic antisemitism was simply a European import to Islam then we have to explain why modern Muslim antisemitic movements were so eager to reactivate Islamic accusations against Jews for supposedly attempting to harm Muslims. Of course Islamic sources do clearly teach anti-Jewish ideas (most notably Qur’an, Hadith, and sira), but after Muhammad’s death there was not a thirteen-century crescendo of Jew-hatred in Muslim politics.

Jews faced discrimination, humiliation, periodic persecution and violence from Muslim rulers across the centuries, but it was only in modern times that Muslims systematically organized their political life with Jews as the enemy. Neither of the typical explanations seems adequate on its own. One explanation sees modern Islamic antisemitism as just a continuation of seventh century anti-Jewish Islam while another suggests that antisemitism was foreign to Islamic civilization and only arrived through Christian Europe, colonialism, and modern racial ideology. Both views capture part of what has happened over the centuries, but neither view can explain how older Islamic theological claims about Jews (which were never new) acquired such force in Muslim discourse against Jews at the exact moment when their political status changed so dramatically.

The key issue, therefore, is not whether anti-Jewish ideas have existed within Islamic history. The key issue is: when, how, and why did those ideas become politically exigent? Muslims have not always made Jews their political enemy because the position occupied by “the Jew” has changed. For centuries Muslims were politically dominant over Jews. Modernity made them equals, Zionism made them politically independent of Muslims and Israel made Jews sovereign over many Muslims. Then, in 1948 and especially in 1967, Jews went from political subordinates to victors.

Modern Jewish sovereignty did not just create a geopolitical crisis for Muslims. In certain restorationist Islamic perspectives it also created something like a crisis of theological explanation, or a problem of theodicy. Theodicy does not simply refer to trying to explain suffering in light of God’s goodness. Instead it also refers to what can happen when a community experiences history in ways that appear to contradict what should happen if divine truth is on its side and if God favors believers and orders things the right way. In short: if Muslims had come to see Islamic political supremacy as fitting the truth and finality of Islam, what was Jews’ surprising sovereignty to say about divine will?

The Jew as Counter-Witness

In order to appreciate the significance of this development, we need to rewind back to square one. Jews whom Muhammad encountered in Medina found themselves in a unique theological situation since Islam inherited its self-understanding from Israel’s revelatory narrative. Muhammad presented himself as more than the founder of another Arabian religion. The message he brought, as recounted in the Qur’an, placed him within the revelation history of Abraham, Moses and the biblical prophets. Jews accordingly had scriptures and traditions that were claimed by the Islamic scripture as its own prototype.

This meant that Jewish rejection functioned differently than pagan rejection. Learned Jews could answer “yes” to Abraham, Moses, covenant, revelation and prophecy then deny Muhammad’ place in that lineage. The Jew was not simply stating “I do not believe you.” He could logically say, “The revelation history you use does not support your conclusion.” Jewish rejection was then able to become counter witness.

Islamic theology would later supply this obstinacy with an explanation. Rather than allowing Jewish disbelief to endanger Muhammad’ s prophethood, Jewish rejection could become synonymous with Jewish spiritual depravity. Qur’anic charges of kitmān (concealment), taḥrīf (distortion/alteration), naqḍ al-mīthāq (breaking the covenant), kufr (disbelief), takdhīb al- rusul (denying the messengers), and ʿiṣyān (disobedience/rebellion) reframed Jewish denial of Islam’s claims as condemnation of those denying it. Jewish rejection could therefore be explained by Islamic scripture.

The point is not to suggest that every remark about Jews in Islam is polemical in nature or that Muslim- Jewish relations can be seen purely through theological lenses. Here we are simply pointing out that because of revelation history Jewish rejection was different. Jews were tied to revelation history that Islam proclaimed to be continuing. Their rejection was a form of internal criticism.

The Contained Counter-Witness

After early Islam, that theological discord was articulated within a different political context. Jews were religious minorities, to be sure, but typically subjects dwelling under Muslim rule as protected, subordinate communities. The dhimma institution had legal, fiscal, administrative and political roles to play. It also applied to Christians and other communities. But its effect was to embed Jewish religious difference within an openly hierarchical political system.

The counter-witness thus persisted, but he was politically constrained. The subordinate Jew could be hated, mocked, or disadvantaged without being seen as a wholesale political menace. Hate and fear are not the same. An inferior population can be tolerated as an object of contempt precisely because it is not seen as a threat to the social order.

This is why polemic texts could be read across the centuries without always inspiring the same political fervor. Books aren’t self-inflammable. It is the interaction of historical forces that makes certain inherited concepts politically relevant. A negative theological repertoire can be latent in one political context and volatile in another.

From Equality to Sovereignty

Modernity brought an end to the older hierarchy. Nineteenth century reform movements, Europeanism, nationalism and changing notions of citizenship increasingly undercut established orders of confessional privilege. Jews and Christians who had formerly been second-class sought out new rationales upon which to base demands for greater legal and political recognition. The older notion of counter-witness hadn’t changed his theology, but the world around him was changing.

Islamic antisemitism soon incorporated European ideas. Racial theories, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, fantasies of Jewish world conspiracy and later Nazi models of race provided further points of explanation. Modern Islamic anti-Semitism was thus a contradictory discourse. Islamic tradition furnished charges of Jewish rejection of Islam, treachery, covenant-breaking, and distortion. European antisemitism contributed conspiracy explanation, racialization, and ideas about occult Jewish power.

Zionism would introduce yet another element. It recast “the Jew” not merely as an individual recipient of emancipation, but as a collective seeking self-rule. Anti-Zionism cannot be taken simply as antisemitism. Palestinians and neighboring Arabs had real national and territorial stakes in opposing a rival nationalist movement. Zionism, however, also changed “the Jews” symbolic valence in particular Islamic imaginations. A people that had long existed beneath Muslim structures of political authority was now asserting its right to political independence.

Israel actualized that assertion. Jewish sovereignty became a political fact on the ground in 1948. The formerly subordinate had become not just equal, but dominant. He now had a state and an army, and had won the war meant to prevent that state from existing in the first place. The theological counter-witness had become sovereign.

1967 and the Crisis of Explanation

If 1948 engendered the contradiction, 1967 deepened it into crisis. Israel’searly triumph in the Six-Day War was no ordinary military victory. Israeli troops defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria incredibly quickly while simultaneously occupying East Jerusalem and lands of unmatched political and religious symbolism. The Jewish state had not just endured. It had soundly defeated the Arab armies that surrounded it.

Who had won mattered. Muslims had suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of European Christians for centuries before the founding of Israel. But European Christian empires were traditionally perceived as great civilizational adversaries. Defeat by Jews carried with it another level of humiliation because Jews had traditionally been subordinates within Muslim political orders. The shock was therefore not simply, “We were defeated.” In many Muslim conceptions the deeper shock was, “We were defeated by them.”

Such a distinction opened the door for theological explanation. Among secular Arab nationalists, 1967 might be interpreted as military defeat and the failures of nationalism, military modernization, and pan-Arab governance. Among Muslims looking toward religion for answers, defeat could be reinterpreted as proof that Muslims had turned away from Islam and that Allah had therefore withdrawn His support. The solution was not going to be found in secularism but piety.

Old charges against Jews could also be revived to help explain the capabilities of their victorious adversary. The Jew was not simply the counter-witness of the seventh century or the subservient minority of the classical Islamic order. He had been made sovereign. Old accusations of Jewish treachery, trickery, covenant-breaking, and hostility towards prophets now became newly activated when paired with European conspiracy theories about Jewish power.

The result was something both medieval and modern. Islamic antisemitism synthesized ancient theology with imported conspiracy, combined political humiliation with a need to assign blame for military defeat.

A Theory of Activation

Which may help you understand why contemporary Islamic anti-Semitism is not simply exaggerated prejudice. Anti-Semitism becomes a theory of history. How do you explain political fragmentation? Military defeat? Western meddling? Corruption? Secularization? Palestine’s loss? Anti-Semitism has answers. It externalizes causation. The Jew, Zionism, or some imagined international Jewish conspiracy provides an imputed occult cause that explains why things are happening.

It also allows one to preserve ideological innocence. If “the community” has the truth on its side and continues to lose battles and wars the gap needs explanation. You can question yourself. You can call for political change. Or, antisemitism lets you off more easily: the community hasn’t failed because it might be wrong, but because it faces an enemy more deceitful and powerful than previous generations have encountered.

Put this way, we can see this historical process unfold in stages. The Jew is initially a theological counter-witness: he possesses previous revelation but rejects Muhammad. Muslim superiority transforms him into a domesticated counter-witness: he can dissent on religious matters but cannot hope for political power. Modernity levels the playing field. Zionism liberates him. Israel gives him strength. At some point after 1948 and particularly after 1967, he figures as a theodic threat in certain revivalist Islamic imaginations.

Obviously not all Muslims conceive of Jews or Israel in this fashion. Neither is Palestine terra nullius, Zionist conquest a mirage, or Muslim reaction to Zionism monolithic. My point concerns processes of activation. Traditions contain many texts and permit many possible readings. Events determine which readings become politically activated.

Antisemitism’s emergence as a political force in the Islamic world cannot therefore be explained by listing hostile Qur’anic verses. Neither can we explain it by showing how European antisemitic texts made their way into the Middle East. Proxies identify resources but not historical activations. For that we need to understand why certain ingredients became_active_ at certain times.

Modern Islamic antisemitism became possible because the theological counter-witness was rendered equal, then sovereign, then victorious.

And when Jewish victory became a theological problem, Islamic antisemitism provided the politics needed to address it.

Sources

Cohen, Mark R. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Durie, Mark. The Qur’an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.

Herf, Jeffrey. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Lewis, Bernard. Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.

Qutb, Sayyid. In the Shade of the Qur’an. Vol. 1, Surahs 1–2. Translated and edited by M. A. Salahi and A. A. Shamis. Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1999.

Wistrich, Robert S. A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. New York: Random House, 2010.

The Church at the Crossroads Conference is not and should not be treated as a regular Christian peace conference. You will discover below that there are plenty of reasons to make this assertion. It is not merely because it is anti-Zionist. The problem with it is far deeper than Israel criticism. The problem is hermeneutical, as it uses a framework to examine scripture to arrive at the political solutions that it desires. Palestinian suffering becomes an interpretive key that controls Christian readings of biblical categories like Israel, covenant, election, land, and Jewish peoplehood.

Therefore the conference becomes spiritually hazardous because it places Palestinian Christians in the position of victims whose experiences are then exploited to indoctrinate ordinary Christians into thinking Jewish covenantal identity itself is a theological issue.

The danger is not simply that Palestinian Christians are being heard. They should be heard, and Palestinian suffering should be taken seriously. It is also not necessarily a danger to criticize Israeli governments, as governments deserve moral examination. One of the dangers I see is Palestinian suffering becoming the primary lens through which Christians are taught to interpret everything about Israel - the land, the covenant, and the biblical story.

The Church at the Crossroads Conference is deeply connected to Bethlehem Bible College and Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice. Munther Isaac and Jack Sara are just two of the most well-known proponents pushing the theology that influences this conference. Upon returning from Bethlehem, conference goers won’t simply have changed minds on certain Israeli policies. They’ll also be exposed to a whole lens through which to view scripture, history, and Christian mission. That isn’t just politics. That is baptism into Arab antisemitism.

It is there that the theological argument needs to be understood. Palestinian dispossession can become the privileged moral lens through which Jewish history itself is interpreted, Jewish claims to sovereignty is understood, and how Christian readings of Israel are evaluated. Election becomes privilege, promise becomes possession, Jewish sovereignty becomes colonialism, and Christian support for Israel becomes complicity. The particular political critique taught at the conference becomes a theological grid through which to view the Jewish people.

The argument is not that opposition to Zionism is antisemitism per se, though I think most forms of anti-zionism are antisemetic. The real problem is when Zionism gets assigned roughly the same theological burden that previous antisemitic worldviews placed on “the Jew.” At that point Zionism stops functioning as merely a political term. When Zionism becomes the explanatory prism through which to understand Palestinian dispossession, Western guilt, evangelical misappropriation, colonialism, militarism, Palestinian suffering, and theological corruption are all made to make sense, it has become something much bigger than a political commitment.

Let me explain why that matters. Antisemitism is what I call a “parasitic theodicy.” This is a term I have coined where a parasitic theodicy externalizes evil onto an opposing force in order to absolve a community’s beliefs of their failure. This allows the group to maintain their perceived innocence of both the belief system and the people who follow it. It has always adapted itself to the moral and political concerns of the age. Sometimes Jews are the enemies of Christ. Sometimes they’re a racial pollutant. Sometimes they represent capitalism, other times revolutionary subversion or communistic oppression. Transportation through our vernacular has allowed it to travel through privilege, colonialism, oppression, liberation, and resistance.

The vocabulary changes but the structure often remains the same. That’s why condemning antisemitism while hosting or attending a gathering that traffics in anti-Jewish theological categories is really not enough. The people who attend may go there to earnestly seek justice. However,they come out of the conference internally reproducing many of the old structures of Christian antisemitism. It is as if medieval European antisemitism has reproduced itself in the Arab world.

This is why Romans 9-11 is nonnegotiable for precisely that reason. Paul will not allow Gentile Christians to read Israel as if they or their theological significance ended with the first coming of Christ. The promises, the patriarchs, the land, the worship, and the election still belong to Israel.

But the trajectory represented at Bethlehem will gently erode that assurance. Because if your theological aim becomes deconstructing Christian attachment to Israel while scrutinizing Jewish claims through the lens of a modern political critique, then you’ll begin viewing Israel less as a sibling with whom the Church shares a common ancestry and more as a domineering parent whose claims must be meticulously interrogated.

This brings me back to Munther Isaac’s public theology. Munther Isaac’s theological project does more than criticize Israeli policies. He deploys Palestinian dispossession as one of several major lenses through which his readers must rethink land, promise, Israel itself, and Christian Zionism.

Again, the question is not simply intention. The bigger question is: what kind of theological habits do these interpretive lenses form in people? Scripture permits no hermeneutic to treat Jewish election and the covenant as merely temporary stopping points along the road to something “better.”

Imagine a Christian goes to Church at the Crossroads conference and hears what they believe to be a compelling moral argument for Palestinian freedom using categories we recognize as historically freighted. They go home inspired, but in the wrong way. They may come home more antisemitic in their ideology. This occurs not because they wanted to be antisemitic or bought into stock tropes about Jewish dominance. It occurs because the leaders of the conference were nurtured in a system that taught them to question Jewish particularity.

The conference’s theological framework should be analyzed in conversation with Palestinian Christianity’s broader regional, cultural, and religious context. Palestinians are not the only Christians living in Muslim-majority societies. They are Arabic-speaking Christians sharing important theological and cultural elements with nearby Islamic traditions. What does that mean for how we read Bethlehem’s “Conference for Christian Witness in Palestine?”

It means we cannot analyze Palestinian Christian theological critiques of Zionism as if they exclusively originate in Western liberation theology. We must take seriously the possibility that Arab and Islamic theological and political narratives about Jews, land, conquest, communal hierarchy, and related topics have impacted Palestinian Christian perceptions of Zionism as well. Not to the exclusion of everything else. But as part of an honest investigation.

To borrow from the categories above, Arab Christian opposition to Zionism may be influenced by things like Christian supersessionism, Palestinian nationalism, Western liberation theology, and Islamists ideas about Jews and Jewish political power. With that said, one needs to keep in mind how antisemitism functions. It offers people explanations for why their social/political/theological world isn’t what they thought it should be. Christian scholars and thinkers should locate the reason for that frustration. When everything that “goes wrong” in the Arab world can be traced back to Zionism, Christians should smell a theological rat.

Suddenly Israel moves from being one culpable actor among many to being the singular explanatory principle through which every other bad actor is understood. Once people or movements achieve that kind of symbolic power to explain everything that goes wrong in life, world politics, and Christian theology, you’re well on your way to repeating older antisemitic paradigms with far better clothing.

A Christian conference for peace and reconciliation would subject every community involved in the conflict to theological criticism. Not just by saying all parties do bad things. But by identifying and naming supersessionist patterns wherever they emerge. Challenging Western Christians for their understanding of the modern State of Israel as if it were beyond moral critique, pressing uncomfortable questions into Israeli society when it commits injustice, critiquing Palestinian nationalism when it stokes hatred or violence against Jews, and calling Islamist anti-Jewishness out wherever we see it — no safe spaces. Just hard truths applied equally to every guilty party.

Where Palestinian Christians reproduce anti-Jewish theological trajectories that Christianity long ago (one hopes) outgrew, that conference should call them out. Not just to earn Palestinian Christian social media likes, but because every tribe comes to the party guilty.

At present, Church at the Crossroads is not just imbalanced. It’s dangerous. There’s little sustained concern for Christian anti-Judaism; little concerted effort to expose Arab Christians to sustained critique of anti-Jewish themes in their own political and religious culture; and no effort I’ve seen to place October 7 in the context of Hamas’s theology rather than primarily through the lens of Palestinian victimhood.

Would Church at the Crossroads be more believable if they applied long-term hermeneutical pressure to Palestinian Christian narratives as they do with Christian Zionists?

When was the last time you saw the Church at the Crossroads deploy Paul’s warning against Gentile arrogance toward Israel in a public forum? The temptation for Gentile Christians to read Scripture as if our struggle with sin and divine wrath were the exclusive or paramount narrative struggled against by the biblical text is great.

So great that you’ll struggle to find it applied to Gentile readers of Romans 9-11. Yet if Palestinian Christians are going to teach other Christians how to read Scripture through the grid of dispossession without submitting that same framework to reciprocal scrutiny in turn, we may have unwittingly reversed Romans 9–11 rather than reconceived our reading of it.

The Church at the Crossroads cannot be a Christian peace conference, because Palestinian Christians deserve as much love, as much justice, and as much attention to their suffering as any other community in the conflict.

But that doesn’t mean we should allow them to form Christians who view Jewish particularity with deep theological suspicion; believe the land rightfully belongs to Palestinians because Jewish promises were merely temporary; or think that supporting Israel as a Jewish political entity is uniquely immoral in the realm of nation-states.

Put supersessionism into the language of decolonization, liberation and resistance and you haven’t altered that theology’s architecture. You’ve dressed it in trendy new clothes and sent it back out into the world. So next generation Christians marvel at how they’ve once again learned to stand in judgment over Jewish people while presuming to be more just.

Historically, one longstanding certainty in American religious life was evangelical support for Israel. No matter what was happening in Washington or on college campuses or in elite media discourse, evangelicals were reliably pro-Israel. However, there is another takeaway from the polling: White evangelical support for Israelis and the Israeli government might be softening, especially among young Christians.

Polling from May 2026 showed that white evangelical Protestants held favorable opinions of the Israeli people. Seventy-four percent of white evangelical Protestants polled by the Pew Research Center said they had a favorable view of the Israeli people. That still puts white evangelical Protestants well above Pew’s polling of other American religious groups when it comes to viewing the Israeli people favorably. But compared with 84 percent in 2024, it is significant. When it comes to views of the Israeli government, support has dropped even more steeply among white evangelicals. From 2024 to 2026, the percentage of white evangelicals viewing the Israeli government positively dropped from 71 percent to 57 percent. According to Pew, 57 percent of white evangelical Protestants held a favorable view of the Israeli government, and they were the only religious group in the survey in which a majority did so.

But a generational gap may be even more impactful. Tablet Magazine covered research from Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin that showed that 68.9 percent of evangelical respondents who were younger than thirty supported Israel as part of a 2018 study. But 33.6 percent of evangelical respondents supported Israel in a larger 2021 study Bumin and Inbari conducted among young evangelicals. In that 2021 survey, 24.3 percent of respondents supported the Palestinians and 42.2 percent took neither side. The samples were not identical. The under-thirty population from the 2018 study had 148 respondents, compared to the 700 respondents from the 2021 study. Thus, the percentages should not be taken to reflect how one group’s views changed over time. They can, however, be used to suggest that young evangelicals are far less uniformly pro-Israel than their parents and grandparents were at the same age.

A 2025 study, Crossroads of Belief: Evangelicals and the Jewish People, produced by Infinity Concepts and Grey Matter Research, points toward another factor that may help explain why: theology. When the researchers surveyed evangelicals about their beliefs, overall belief that Jews are God’s chosen people remained relatively constant. 49 percent said Jews are God’s chosen people today, little changed from 51 percent in 2021. Among evangelicals under thirty-five, however, only 29 percent agreed that Jews are God’s chosen people. Again, this doesn’t show that evangelical theology is eroding. What it does suggest is that younger evangelicals are missing some of the theological motivations that drove and accounted for fervent evangelical support for Jews and their ongoing theological importance.

Pointing this out is not to say that declining pro-Israel sentiment equals anti-Semitism. It does not. Christian believers can oppose Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli settlements, the war in Gaza, or even particular actions by the Israel Defense Forces without being anti-Semitic. Palestinian suffering is real, and taking their suffering seriously is not anti-Semitic either. Christians who support Israel should never have to pretend that every Israeli government decision is wise, moral, or above critique.

The broader fear is what occurs when one plank of traditional Christian support for Jews and Israel erodes. If evangelical (or Catholic or Orthodox Christian) belief that Jews are God’s chosen people becomes weaker, or ties to Israel are seen as less necessary or valuable, what prevents a Christian community from accepting viewpoints they might have once considered dubious or outside the pale of acceptable discourse? Diminished support for Israel does not cause anti-Semitism, but it may eliminate one of the factors that once inoculated ordinary Christians from explicitly anti-Semitic ideas. But it warrants highlighting because this shift is happening alongside historic levels of antisemitism in American society.

The Anti-Defamation League reported 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2025. Compared to 2024, that represented a 33 percent decline from the record-breaking 9,354 incidents the ADL recorded the year prior. But 2025 still saw the third-highest number of annual incidents since the ADL began compiling data in 1979. Incidents were five times higher than they were a decade ago, and physical assaults reached an all-time high. Nearly half (45 percent) of the incidents ADL tracked in 2025 “included narratives related to Israel or Zionism.” (ADL)

Long-term support of Israel has been far more than partisan positions on foreign policy for evangelical Christians. Previous generations of evangelical support for Israel was based on a larger theological narrative about who Jewish people are, what their story means in the biblical narrative, and what God has promised to continue to do for Israel. The story of Israel has not only made Jewish people an important part of Christian theology but it has also had far deeper effects on evangelicals than just shaping American foreign policy. The story of Israel has made the Jewish people an important part of Christian theology and has given Christians theological reasons to regard hatred of Jews as morally and theologically condemnable.

If younger generations of evangelicals are abandoning this kind of Zionism, what could be lost is not simply a set of foreign-policy beliefs. What could be lost is part of the theological infrastructure that once helped ensure that such hatred was unthinkable. To be clear: I do not think young evangelicals who have shifted away from supporting Israel are antisemitic. I am not arguing that Christians ought to support any Israeli government policies no matter how unethical those policies may be. I want to suggest that unless young evangelicals have the same sorts of theological motivations for grasping the Jewish people’s ongoing role in God’s plans, they may lack the same theological safeguards against Jewish-hatred that former generations have benefitted from.

One reason this question matters to many Americans right now is because anti-Semitism remains at historically high levels in our country. Christians of the left and the right would do well to consider what their theology says about the Jewish people, and if their theology gives them religious reason to continue to reject one of Christianity’s oldest temptations; the temptation to hate Jews, marginalize Jews, or blame Jews for society’s problems. The test for American Christianity will come down to whether or not they can maintain a theological account of who Jews are that renders anti-Semitism unthinkable; or whether that commitment will fade away due to ambivalence, political tribalism, or a belief that Jewish uniqueness is no more than a benign relic of ancient scripture. Evangelicals should, and will, always disagree about Netanyahu, Hamas, Israeli settlements, and American foreign policy. But they should ask themselves what they stand to lose if they stop believing the theological story that made care for the Jewish people a central tenet of Christianity. In a time of historically high levels of antisemitism, losing that conviction and failing to replace it with something that can do the similar ideological work of guarding Christians against Jewish hate could become far more dangerous than any change of a few percentage points in the next poll.

Sources

Anti-Defamation League. Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2025. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 2026.

Inbari, Motti, and Kirill Bumin. Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Opinion on Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.

Infinity Concepts and Grey Matter Research. Crossroads of Belief: Evangelicals and the Jewish People. 2025.

Pew Research Center. “Americans’ Views of Israelis Have Grown Increasingly Negative, but Views of Palestinians Have Held Fairly Steady.” July 9, 2026.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the Oxford Union debate about the motion “This House Believes the West Is Right to Be Suspicious of Islam” was too big to miss. The debate over whether Islam poses legitimate concerns for Western societies reportedly required an unprecedented security effort to occur. Police cordons and teams of private security were needed to separate the debaters and attendees of the event from protesters outside the building. Of course, this doesn’t prove the motion. And the protest behavior outside should not be considered reflective of Islam’s nearly two billion adherents worldwide. But the security context surrounding this debate is not irrelevant, either. When hundreds of police officers are needed to provide intellectual security, the security presence itself becomes part of the problem to be analyzed. It’s not evidence for what all or most Muslims believe; it is evidence of the conditions under which Islam can currently be discussed in Western liberal democracies, including the opposition to such discussions by Muslims themselves.

On June 17, 2026 officers formed police cordons and hired private security officers to ensure the safety of debate participants. The situation dissolved into such a level of conflict that it became difficult for people to enter or leave the Oxford Union without facing confrontation. The cost of police operations reportedly reached £100,000 ($155,000).

The troublesome part of the need for such security for an event like this, is that there was a strong move by some Muslims to ensure that this topic should not be debated. This can become a piece of evidence for some that proves the motion. But a liberal society ensures that a debate like this should take place because the free expression of ideas should be discussed in the marketplace. The question then is whether those demonstrating outside reveal something about Islam.

The larger issue may not be suspicion toward Muslims, but whether Western institutions have the confidence to study Islam with the same openness they would apply to Christianity, Judaism, patriarchy, liberalism, socialism or any other belief system that structures human lives. Asking questions about Islam is important precisely because Islam is not monolithic. It has inspired holy texts, a history of theological debates, a division of denominations such as Sunnis and Shia, composed of reformists and conservatives, different schools of Islamic law, and political Islamist movements that want to dominate the state. Serious examination of those traditions also demands serious distinctions.

Not every conservative Muslim has the same political outlook as al-Qaida. Muslims can be the targets of Islamist terrorism too. But intellectual honesty in the other direction is required as well: just because Muslims should not be collectively blamed for terrorism does not mean we can never question how certain Islamic teachings have been used to justify violence.

If police cordons become necessary to allow people to enter a building to hear debates about religion, the debate is no longer purely about theology. It is about the future of liberalism. Freedom of speech exists only in the most formal sense if individuals know discussing certain topics will predictably require extraordinary security. Free speech protects a right to say whatever you want, but it is a radically different right when what you want to say means you also need police protection.

Adding to the controversy, Oxford Union trustee Jonathan Sacerdoti said on Twitter that when the event concluded, the Union told him footage would be released “sometime within the next 2 weeks.” It took over six weeks for full speech transcripts to be released. In that time, the Union allegedly uploaded footage to a third party site where it appeared in a brief edited video Sacerdoti says misrepresented the event. Sacerdoti released his own audio recording of the event, after which the Union promptly released transcripts of the speeches hours later, according to Sacerdoti. He also alleged that the Oxford Union refused to publish remarks by one Muslim student who argued in favor of the motion and discussed personal experiences with violence at certain mosques in Britain. Sacerdoti posted a recording of that student’s full speech as well.

Some of the most courageous critics of Islamist thought have been Muslim commentators, including reformers, dissidents, journalists, women’s-rights activists, converts from Islamism, and ordinary Muslims criticizing extremist readings of their religion. When people portray criticism of Islamic beliefs as intrinsically hostile to Muslims, they risk chilling criticism from the very Muslims whose voices ought to be heard the loudest. The line that matters, in other words, is not between people who criticize Islam and people who respect Muslims. Respect should never be mistaken for immunity from criticism. A pluralist society shouldn’t need to mute its own citizens in order to show respect for Muslims either.

However, we shouldn’t romanticize the category of “Muslim dissident” itself. Muslim opponents of Islamism have views towards Gaza/Israel/Zionism/Palestinian resistance that align significantly with themes found in Muslim Brotherhood political rhetoric for decades—even as they distance themselves from the Brotherhood or other forms of political Islam. That’s why we can’t categorically separate Muslim thinkers into “moderates” vs. “Islamists.” One can be critical of clerics/jihadist violence/women’s rights and wholeheartedly accept the political storyline being pushed about Israel that’s based on the same ideological assumptions that Islamists operate under. This isn’t to single out Muslim reformers and say they’re bad—simply to hold them to the same standard this article is trying to establish: don’t give anyone a free pass just because they’re considered a dissenter.

Which leads me to the still-more-profound irony behind what occurred at Oxford. One argument Aisha Khan Aziz reportedly made during the debate was that Tommy Robinson was being owed special protection against the hostile crowd outside by virtue of his inclusion in an event hosted by a Muslim Palestinian president and a mostly South Asian executive committee. Aziz reportedly said that without those people watching his back, Robinson “would literally be cooked.” Sacerdoti read this as tantamount to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. He interpreted it as tacit blackmail: you owe Robinson an apology for criticizing Islam only because the Muslims inside are restraining other Muslims outside who might hurt him if given the opportunity. Whether or not Aziz intended this inference, the logic underlying her remark deserves commentary of its own. The deeper liberal conviction is that no one should need bodyguards just for speaking at a debate.

So the solution to Oxford is not suspicion of Muslims. It’s remembering that one of liberalism’s oldest principles seems to have been forgotten: people deserve protection; ideas deserve criticism. We should never require all Muslims to police the thoughts of extremists who claim to speak on their behalf. But we can and should insist that Islamic scriptures, doctrines, institutions, political movements, and interpretations remain fair game for critique. Likewise, protestors have every right to loudly denounce speakers they find bigoted. But they don’t have the rest to use their rights to promote fear of debate, nor incite violence. Neither fear nor respect should put citizens in that position.

Sources

Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Oxford City Council. “Statement on the Oxford Union Invitation to Tommy Robinson.” 2026. https://www.oxford.gov.uk/news/article/1857/statement-on-the-oxford-union-invitation-to-tommy-robinson.

OxfordUnion. “THB the West Is Right to Be Suspicious of Islam—Full Debate.” YouTube video. 2026.

Pew Research Center. “The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity.” August 9, 2012. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-executive-summary/.

Sacerdoti, Jonathan. “Public Posts and Commentary Concerning the Oxford Union Debate.” 2026. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/MrJonsac.

“Tommy Robinson’s Invitation to Oxford Union Met with Protest: Live Updates.” Cherwell, June 17, 2026. https://www.cherwell.org/2026/06/17/union-west-is-right-to-be-suspicious-of-islam-debate/.

“Tommy Robinson Apologises to Muslim Student over Oxford Union Islam Debate.” The Independent, 2026. https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/tommy-robinson-apology-muslim-student-oxford-union-islam-debate-b3028577.html.

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

1. David Cook, Understanding Jihad, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015).

2. 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,

1. 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/.

2. 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/.

3. 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.

4. 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/.

5. “Oxford since 7/10—Open Letter,” last updated May 27, 2024, accessed August 13, 2026, https://sites.google.com/view/openletteroxford/open-letter.

6. 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/.

7. 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/.

8. 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.

On Saturday, I woke up around midnight US time, which was 5 a.m. London time. Four hours later I boarded a plane out of London, flew to Detroit, and then caught a connection home to Indianapolis, wrapping up a two-week trip to the University of Cambridge. It was an amazing trip and I will share more details with everyone next week.

For now, I am recuperating from the trip by reading the Book of Philippians over and over again, meditating on certain passages. There is nothing like expending yourself for God’s glory then having him restore your soul through his Word. Travel and lectures, dialogues and engagement from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, day after day, leaves the body tired, the mind a bit scattered and the spirit depleted. But God’s word can perform a restoring work by recentering my heart, quieting the noise that lay dormant within my heart, and renewing my strength. God reminded me who I am in the grand scheme of things and that He wanted to send me here. As Psalm 23:3 says, “He restores my soul.” I am grateful that God does not simply call me to keep going in my own strength; He invites me to come back to Him and be renewed.

Philippians was meaningful to me and included exactly what I needed to hear because Paul, writing from prison, is doing so from a place of limitation. Despite this fact, his words are filled with joy, confidence, humility, and dependence upon Christ. During my reading, I paused to meditate on Philippians 1:6 where Paul reminds us that God is the One who begins the good work and carries it forward, and Philippians 4:13, where our strength is found not in ourselves but in Christ. Those truths are helping me remember that ministry is never sustained by my own self-effort but is sustained by Christ himself.

There is also something humbling about coming home tired. After two weeks of conversations, lectures, study, and engagement, I am reminded that I am not indispensable. God was at work before I arrived in Cambridge, He was at work while I was there, and He will continue His work long after I leave. My responsibility is simply to be faithful with what He puts before me and then trust Him with the results. Sometimes faithfulness means going, speaking, and engaging. At other times, faithfulness means resting, listening, receiving, and allowing God to restore what has been poured out.

So, for the next few days, I am intentionally slowing down, starting with Philippians. I am reading Philippians repeatedly, praying through its words, and allowing Scripture to reorder my thoughts and affections. I do not want to rush past what God may want to teach me through this season of recovery. The same God who sends us into the work is also the God who calls us back to Himself, restores our souls, and prepares us for whatever comes next.

Every generation of Christians has its blind spots, including our present generation. The Protestant Reformers believed that important dimensions of the biblical teaching on justification had become obscured and needed to be recovered. In a similar way, I believe much of the Church has failed to see what Scripture says about God’s continuing purposes for Israel. I believe the Church has another major blind spot today that has the potential to cause much harm. This blind spot reaches across Protestant, Catholic Eastern Orthodox lines and, to the surprise of many, is becoming increasingly common even among American Evangelicals. The latter move is significant because this group has historically rejected replacement theology, due in part because of American dispensational commitments. I myself reject dispensationalism and instead opt for a new Christian Zionism that is not dependent on classic dispensationalism. Unfortunately, millions of Christians, particularly in the West (especially Europe) and the Arab world, still read the New Testament as though God quietly replaced Israel with the Church.

The problem here is not merely historical, but it is also biblical. Romans 11 stands in the middle of the New Testament as perhaps the clearest rejection of the idea that God has finished with Israel. I’m not sure exactly why, but it remains one of the least preached and least understood chapters in Scripture. If Paul were writing today, I suspect he would be astonished that Christians are still debating a question he addressed so directly nearly two thousand years ago: Has God rejected His people?

Paul’s answer could not be stronger: Has God rejected Israel? “By no means!” (Rom. 11:1).

But Paul’s concern extends beyond the Jewish people because what is at stake is the character of God Himself. If God can abandon Israel, what confidence can Christians have that He will remain faithful to His promises to us? Romans 11 is therefore not only about Israel. It is also about whether God can be trusted.

Romans 9–11 is Paul’s extended defense of God’s covenant faithfulness. Israel’s widespread unbelief within Israel created a serious theological question for the early Church. If Israel was truly God’s chosen people, what were Christians supposed to make of the fact that so many Jewish people had not embraced Jesus as the Messiah? Did that mean God’s word had failed? Had He somehow gone back on His promises? Could God really cast aside the very people He had once called His own?

Paul refuses even to entertain that possibility. “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” Once again, his answer is this: “By no means!” Notice that Paul does not start by laying out a complicated prophetic timeline as American Christians are used to seeing. He starts with the character and faithfulness of God. After all, every promise of the gospel rests on the faithfulness of God.

Paul points to himself as living proof that God had not rejected Israel by reminding them that he himself is an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, and a member of the tribe of Benjamin. Paul’s story showed that God was still keeping His promises to Israel. His own conversion was proof that God was still at work among the Jewish people.

Paul then turns to the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah had become convinced that all of Israel had turned away from God and that he was the only faithful person left. God corrected him by saying, “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” That detail matters because the seven thousand had not kept themselves faithful. God preserved them.

Paul draws the same lesson for his own generation. From the outside, it may have looked as though all of Israel had turned away, but that was not the whole story as God had preserved a remnant who was “chosen by grace.” Israel’s widespread unbelief did not mean that God had turned His back on His people. It simply meant that God was still working, even when His purposes were not easy to see. At the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.

This pattern runs throughout Scripture as human beings tend to look at what is happening in front of them and conclude that God’s work has failed. Elijah had made that mistake, and Paul did not want the Gentile believers in Rome to repeat it. God has always kept a faithful remnant, not because they were strong enough to preserve themselves, but because He is gracious and faithful.

Paul then raises another question: Had Israel failed beyond recovery? This is an important question. But Paul’s simple answer is clear: “By no means!” Israel had stumbled, but that did not mean its fall was final. Israel’s rejection opened the way for the gospel to reach the Gentiles, but even that was part of God’s larger plan. An important fact that Christians need to be cognizant of is that the inclusion of the Gentiles was never meant to prove that God had cast Israel aside.

This brings us to Paul’s image of the olive tree in Romans 11:16–24. Before I address this I need to state that the olive tree is Israel, which means it remains a Jewish tree. Few images in Paul’s writings have been misunderstood more than this one. Many Christians read Paul as though he were describing two separate trees—Israel, which is fading away, and then the Church, which takes Israel’s place. Paul never says this because there is only one tree. The New Testament never resolves the relationship between Israel and the Church by simply renaming the Gentile Church “Israel.” Gentiles are brought into Israel’s blessings, but Jewish Israel does not disappear.

Where exactly are the roots of that tree found? The answer to that question is simple, namely in the patriarchs and in the covenant promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Gentile believers are not placed into a separate tree with no connection to Israel. Instead, they are graciously grafted into a tree that was already there. God’s covenant story did not begin with the Church. It began with Israel, the prophets, the covenants, and the promises that eventually brought the Messiah into the world.

This means that Gentile Christians are living from roots they did not plant themselves. We do not support the root because the root supports us, which is why Paul warns Gentile believers not to become arrogant toward the natural branches. This makes our proper posture to be gratitude, and not superiority.

Paul is clear that some of the natural branches were broken off because of unbelief. He is also clear that being Jewish by birth does not automatically guarantee salvation.

This means that both Jews and Gentiles stand before God by grace through faith. Yet Paul makes it clear that God can graft those natural branches back into the tree. In fact, Paul says it would be far more natural for them to be grafted back in than it was for wild Gentile branches to be added in the first place.

The whole image is meant to humble Gentile Christians. We were once outsiders, but God brought us near by His grace. We did not begin the covenant story, earn the promises for ourselves, or replace the people through whom those promises were given. We were grafted in.

Unfortunately, Church history often moved in a very different direction. Within a few centuries, influential Christian leaders began speaking as though God had finished with Israel for good. Justin Martyr helped move the Church toward this view by increasingly speaking of the Church as the true Israel. John Chrysostom’s infamous sermons against the Jews showed how theological disagreement could quickly turn into open contempt.

Augustine opposed violence against the Jews and believed they should be allowed to survive rather than be killed. Yet he often viewed their continued existence mainly as evidence of God’s judgment and as a witness to Christian truth, rather than as proof that God still had a future for them within His covenant purposes. His view may have prevented some violence, but it also helped create a theology in which Jewish suffering was seen as proof that Christianity had triumphed.

Replacement theology was not the only cause of Christian antisemitism as history is often more complicated than that. Yet it helped create a theological climate in which anti-Jewish attitudes could easily take root. Once Christians believed that God had rejected the Jewish people, it became much easier for them to justify treating Jews with contempt.

Paul leaves no room for this kind of arrogance. He warns Gentile believers not to become proud, but to fear. We stand only by faith, so Christians should never speak about Jewish unbelief as though we are somehow wiser, better, or more deserving. We are here only because God has shown us mercy.

Paul brings his argument to its high point in Romans 11:25–29. He says that Israel’s hardening is only partial and then speaks of a future when “all Israel will be saved.” Christians may disagree about exactly what that phrase means, but Paul’s larger point is clear: Israel’s present condition is not the end of the story.

Paul then says that, although many within Israel are presently enemies regarding the gospel, they remain “beloved for the sake of their forefathers.” Why? “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” God does not take back His promises when people fail. He remains faithful because faithfulness is part of who He is.

Israel’s calling was not exhausted when the Messiah came. Paul says that Israel remains beloved and that its calling remains irrevocable. This means that the Jewish people continue to have a place within God’s purposes for the world.

That is why Romans 11 matters so much. It is not only about prophecy, ethnicity, or the modern State of Israel. At its heart, it is about whether God keeps His promises. The God who remains faithful to Israel is the same God who remains faithful to the Church.

The Church needs to hear Paul’s warning again. We must reject Gentile pride and any theology that treats the Jewish people as leftovers from a covenant God has abandoned. We do not support the root. The root supports us.

Romans 11 leaves no room for contempt toward the Jewish people because it leaves no room for Christian triumphalism. It also leaves no room for the claim that God’s covenant faithfulness has expired.

Our proper posture is humility, gratitude, and hope. We stand by grace, live from promises we did not create, and worship the God whose gifts and calling are irrevocable.

Further Reading

McDermott, Gerald R. Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2017.

McDermott, Gerald R., ed. The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016.

McDermott, Gerald R., ed. Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Essays on the Relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021.

I am a conservative who would not agree on much of Van Jones’s politics, but I must admire his position on Israel and the Jewish people. There are several reasons Van Jones deserves not only recognition but also strong public support for his work. He is taking incredible risks professionally for taking the Zionist stance he has taken. In this article, I want to highlight several reasons why he needs our backing. He has both spoken out directly on behalf of the Jewish people and his work on Black–Jewish relations is probably the strongest piece of evidence that his support for Jews and Israel is sustained rather than limited to a few comments after October 7. Jones repeatedly connects that coalition work to Israeli security, the hostages, opposition to Hamas, Jewish self-determination, and resistance to anti-Zionist delegitimization.

1. His Black–Jewish advocacy predates October 7

At the UJA-Federation of New York’s Wall Street Dinner on December 5, 2022, Jones began his keynote address with the following statement:

“I apologize for the silence of my community.”

In the talk, he addressed the concern regarding the failure of prominent Black voices to respond forcefully enough to rising antisemitism. His particular concern was the lack of a response after Kanye West’s statements praising Hitler and attacking Jews. Jones promised that “the silence is over” and a stronger Black response to anti-Jewish hatred would be furthered. He then devoted much of the speech to the historic Black–Jewish civil-rights alliance. He spoke about his Jewish godmother, Dorothy “Dottie” Zellner, who had been active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He also praised the role Jewish activists played in the fight against Jim Crow. He argued that Black and Jewish Americans helped shape American democracy as they stood together in support of one another through some of the country’s most difficult moments.

This speech matters because it was delivered 10 months before October 7, 2023. His concern for Black–Jewish relations was therefore not merely a reaction to the Gaza war.

2. He founded the EXODUS Leadership Forum

Jones founded the EXODUS Leadership Forum, an organization specifically intended to renew the historic alliance among Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish leaders, combat antisemitism and racism, reduce polarization and strengthen democratic cooperation. Its “EXODUS Over Dinner” program brings members of the communities together for structured conversations about history, prejudice, Israel and other difficult issues.

By January 2026, those dinners were taking place in multiple cities. Jones told the Forward that EXODUS expected to host more than 300 dinners in 2026 together with local organizations. The dinners gave participants an opportunity to share their personal experiences. This, of course, is a key ingredient in building solidarity. The meeting then turned to more difficult political disagreements.

Jones’s leadership and organizational ability were on display as he built an organization, created programs, brought leaders together, and risked his own reputation to repair the relationship.

3. His “Five H’s” framework explicitly includes Israel

On October 7, 2024, Jones published “The Five H’s of the Black-Jewish Alliance.” His five subjects were:

• The humanitarian crisis in Gaza

• The hostages

• Hate crimes

• Hamas

• Homeland

Jones argued that Black Americans could oppose Netanyahu’s conduct of the war while still standing with Jewish Americans and Israelis, demanding the hostages’ release, rejecting Hamas and opposing antisemitic violence. Most importantly, he stated:

“The Palestinians need a secure homeland. The Israelis need a secure homeland.”

He also rejected the proposition that Jews should be the one people denied a right to a secure homeland. That is an explicit affirmation of Jewish national self-determination—not merely support for the personal safety of American Jews.

This is probably the clearest intersection between his Black-Jewish work and his pro-Israel position.

4. He brought Black leaders to Auschwitz

In January 2025, Jones led an EXODUS–Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation delegation to Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The delegation included Black leaders and was intended to deepen Holocaust education and Black–Jewish understanding.

In June 2025, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation honored Jones at its 25th-anniversary gala for his work promoting Black–Jewish relations. Jones used the occasion to praise Jewish civil-rights activists who, shortly after the Holocaust, traveled to the American South to oppose segregation. He described the combination of the Black commitment to “justice for all” and the Jewish commitment to repairing the world as a “double helix of hope.”

5. He organized a national Black–Jewish convening

From May 28–30, 2026, the EXODUS Leadership Forum and the Redstone Family Foundation brought more than 100 Black, Jewish and Black-Jewish clergy, educators, activists, philanthropists and cultural figures together in Miami. The gathering addressed antisemitism, racism, difficult political “wedge” issues and the future of Black–Jewish cooperation.

The convening produced a draft national strategy organized around five areas: historical education, trust-building, public narratives of Black–Jewish cooperation, coordination among organizations and expanded collective advocacy.

That represents institutional and strategic coalition-building, not simply ceremonial friendship.

6. He has challenged anti-Zionism within progressive circles

Zioness, an organization that identifies itself as both progressive and Zionist, features an endorsement from Jones. In it, Jones warns that parts of the progressive movement contain:

“anti-Jewish hatred that parades under these terms of ‘anti-Zionist’”

He praised Zioness for helping progressives understand the issue and how to respond to that rhetoric with greater confidence. This is particularly significant because Jones is not merely denouncing neo-Nazis or conventional antisemitism from the right. He is challenging the use of anti-Zionist language to marginalize Jews within his own progressive political community.

7. Jewish institutions have formally recognized this work

In June 2026, Jones joined the Genesis Prize Foundation’s advisory board. The foundation stated that he would focus particularly on strengthening the Black–Jewish alliance and broadening opposition to antisemitism and other forms of hatred. The foundation seeks to strengthen Jewish identity, as well as deepen the relationship between Israel and Jewish communities worldwide.

Bibliography

Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation. “Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation to Honor CNN’s Van Jones at Annual Gala.” Newswire, May 22, 2025. https://www.newswire.com/news/auschwitz-jewish-center-foundation-to-honor-cnns-van-jones-at-annual-22579111.

Cohen, Haley. “‘A Double Helix of Hope’: Van Jones Calls for Renewed Black-Jewish Alliance.” eJewishPhilanthropy, June 12, 2025. https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/a-double-helix-of-hope-van-jones-calls-for-renewed-black-jewish-alliance/.

Combat Antisemitism Movement. “‘A Vision Coming to Life’: More Than 100 Leaders Join First National Convening of Black-Jewish Alliance.” June 3, 2026. https://combatantisemitism.org/cam-news/a-vision-coming-to-life-more-than-100-leaders-join-first-national-convening-of-black-jewish-alliance/.

Cooper, Andrea. “Black and Jewish People Were Allies Once. Can They Be Again?” The Forward, January 19, 2026. https://forward.com/news/798357/black-jewish-alliances-van-jones-exodus-rekindle/.

eJewishPhilanthropy. “Full Text and Recording of Van Jones’ Speech at the UJA-Federation Wall Street Dinner.” December 7, 2022. https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/full-text-and-recording-of-van-jones-speech-at-the-uja-federation-wall-street-dinner/.

Genesis Prize Foundation. “Mission and Vision of the Genesis Prize.” https://www.genesisprize.org/about/mission

Genesis Prize Foundation. “Van Jones, Renowned Civil Rights Advocate and Senior CNN Political Commentator, Joins Advisory Board of the Genesis Prize, ‘The Jewish Nobel.’” The Genesis Prize, June 17, 2026. https://www.genesisprize.org/press-center/2026-06-17-van-jones-renowned-civil-rights-advocate-and-senior-cnn-political-commentator-joins-advisory-board-of-the-genesis-prize-the-jewish-nobel.

Jones, Van. “The Five Hs of the Black-Jewish Alliance.” Van Jones, October 7, 2024. https://vanjones.substack.com/p/the-five-hs-of-the-black-jewish-alliance

Zagelbaum, Rikki. “‘Breakthroughs for US Democracy’ When Jewish, Black Communities United.” JNS, June 13, 2025. https://www.jns.org/u.s.-news/breakthroughs-for-us-democracy-when-jewish-black-communities-united

Zioness Movement. “Testimonials.” Accessed July 27, 2026. https://zioness.org/testimonials/.

The argument I want to make is this: for peace in the Middle East to happen, the Muslim religious and political culture must change and affirm a permanent moral order in which Jewish sovereignty is legitimate, equal, and cannot be changed in the future.

When I say this, I am not saying that this is only a Muslim phenomenon, nor am I attempting to marginalize Muslims. Far from it. In this article, I deal with Muslims because, one, this is my area of expertise and two, because this group represents over one fourth of the world’s population. The religious ideas I explore here continue to exert significant influence around the world.

Right now the public’s focus is on Iran and Hamas, and wondering if they can change. But there are deeper questions that linger. Will the Muslim world as a whole change? Of course, Muslims should not be looked at as a monolith, but these ideas exist and are reinforced through religious leaders, political institutions, schools, activist movements, media outlets, and Muslim communities throughout the world. With this globalized network, there also lies a possible path to establish a new moral consensus concerning Jews.

The transformation required for peace cannot remain the private conviction of individual Muslims or the marginal position of a few reformers; it has to become institutionally authoritative.

Interfaith Interaction Must Change

Much contemporary Western interfaith engagement is shaped by moral idealism, and is partly rooted in liberal Protestant and Catholic traditions. This approach has real value as it emphasizes things like goodwill, shared values, common ground. It holds firmly to the hope that greater understanding can reduce conflict and encourage lasting cooperation. These aims are valuable, but they can sometimes underestimate the depth of the disagreements involved or cause one to see things as much better than they actually are.. Moral realism, on the other hand, begins by recognizing that religious communities may hold conflicting truth claims, historical narratives, and moral frameworks that goodwill alone cannot resolve. Dialogue still matters, but it must take those differences seriously rather than assuming that better relationships will eventually make them disappear.

That gap matters most when interfaith dialogue turns to Israel and the Jewish people, where conciliatory language can easily mask deeper convictions. When moral idealism is employed, the assumption is that something of significance has been accomplished when Muslim leaders condemn antisemitism, then use moderate language and express a willingness to coexist with Israel under present conditions. Moral realism, on the other hand, goes much further. It seeks to answer a deeper question by looking beyond the superficial and examining religious and political convictions beneath the conciliatory language. Do they truly hold to the conviction that Jewish sovereignty should be morally legitimate and permanent?

Moderation Is Not Yet Recognition

There are Islamic nations that may accept Israel as an existing state based on pragmatic motivations. They may even maintain diplomatic relations that help start economic ties and restrain violence. Yet merely acknowledging that Israel exists is not the same as affirming that Jewish sovereignty is morally legitimate and has a right to endure.

Israel can be tolerated because it is powerful and presently cannot be defeated. None of these positions necessarily recognizes that the state has a moral right to endure.

This distinction is very important because when peace depends solely on a strong Israel can collapse if the balance of power ever changes. In effect, Israel is just being tolerated only for as long as it remains too strong to defeat. Instead, it is a strategic postponement of aggression when the situation ever presents itself, and may represent the present position of many Muslim nations and governments.

It would require a broad and unambiguous affirmation within Muslim religious and political culture that Jews possess a legitimate right to collective self-government and self-determination. It would require saying that Jewish sovereignty is not an offense against Islam simply because it is Jewish.

On the other hand, this affirmation would not require Muslims to approve of everything the Israeli government does. Nor would it mean that Palestinians must give up their national identity, stop seeking freedom, or remain silent about suffering.

The resistance to permanent Jewish sovereignty goes beyond antisemitism; it is rooted in a wider theological and political framework in which several ideas reinforce one another.

• Muhammad’s conflicts with Jewish communities as they are presented in Islamic tradition.

• Jihad as a means by which Islamic political authority was historically expanded and defended.

• The “house of Islam” and the “house of war,” or in Arabic, Dār al-Islām and Dār al-Ḥarb. The “house of Islam” broadly means the lands governed by Muslim authority. The “house of war” refers to the lands outside Muslim rule.

• The dhimma system, under which Jews and Christians could be protected but occupied a subordinate political position. This system continues to influence conditions to varying degrees in some Muslim-majority countries

The difficulty created when territory once governed by Muslims passes permanently under non-Muslim sovereignty. i.e. Israel. The word for this in Arabic is Waqf. The idea is that once Islam conquers a nation, it is theirs forever. Islamists use this term to describe all of Palestine as an Islamic waqf. Historically, using Waqf as Islamists is a tough idea to defend. The Islamic literature doesn’t seem to support this reading.

Modern Islamists have used the above narrative to spread the idea that Zionism is evil.

The leading way these ideas are distributed is through YouTube, social media, and podcasts. It has digitized the Islamist narrative and many Muslims have adopted it.

The chief offenders, meaning those who have actively spread this narrative to large online or political audiences, include Mohammed Hijab, Daniel Haqiqatjou, Ali Dawah, Muslim Lantern, Omar Suleiman, Yasir Qadhi, Mufti Menk, Nouman Ali Khan, Hamza Tzortzis, Uthman ibn Farooq, Dalia Mogahed, Linda Sarsour, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Noura Erakat.

Toward Territorial Finality in Muslim Political Thought

The next transformation I would like to address concerns territory, which follows directly from that sovereignty argument. Muslim political and religious thought teaches that all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea must eventually be removed from Israeli sovereignty. This continues to be the mantra for the far left and is echoed on college campuses. Whatever language is used to express it, the result is the same: Jewish sovereignty is treated as temporary, while Muslim or Palestinian sovereignty is treated as the only morally acceptable final outcome. This position, according to its own logic, makes permanent peace impossible.

A transformed Muslim political theology would have to give up the belief that land under Jewish sovereignty is merely waiting to be reclaimed by Muslims at some point in the future. It would have to say clearly that no future generation is religiously obligated to reverse Israel’s existence. It would also have to recognize that Palestinian dignity and political rights do not require the disappearance of Jewish sovereignty.

Modern Jews Must Be Released From Ancient Religious War

One of the central problems that affect how Muslims see Israel and Jews points back to their holy books. Therefore, no transformation will be complete until contemporary Jews are no longer forced into the roles assigned to them in certain readings of the Qur’an, Hadith, and tafsir. For instance, traditions about Khaybar, an apocalyptic conflict, or the end times cannot be treated as political instructions for how Muslims should relate to Jews today. Thus, what needs to happen is that many mainstream Muslim scholars need to argue that these traditions describe a specific seventh-century conflict and are not timeless commands.

Muslim scholars and thinkers must situate these religious texts historically, debate them theologically, read them metaphorically, or confine them to the particular contexts in which they arose. As I see it, what must be rejected is the habit of turning ancient conflicts and end-times imagery into a permanent way of defining Jewish communities today. Without substantial change, modern Jews will be presented as participants in an eternal religious war. This means that realpolitik becomes almost impossible to overcome.

When this happens, Jewish individuals cease to be judged by their own conduct and instead become representatives of a timeless enemy, where collective guilt replaces individual responsibility. Instead the following happens:

• They become representatives of a timeless enemy.

• Collective guilt replaces individual responsibility.

• Compromise becomes apostasy.

• Political defeat becomes religious humiliation.

• Violence acquires cosmic meaning.

Under this worldview, the conflict cannot end because the problem is no longer what the government does. The real problem becomes what Jews are. That is where political criticism turns into civilizational hatred.

What exactly would a Muslim moral transformation look like? I believe it would require religious authorities within the Muslim world to state clearly that contemporary Jews are not characters in an inherited apocalyptic drama. This means that they do not bear collective responsibility for ancient conflicts. They are not religious symbols on whom the grievances of history should be taken out.

Thus, modern conflicts must be judged according to the conduct of modern actors. No people can be permanently imprisoned within an enemy role inherited from antiquity.

Civilian Immunity Must Be Absolute

Muslim religious and political institutions must teach that Israeli civilians remain civilians. Their nationality does not make them legitimate instruments of pressure. Nor does being Jewish make them personally responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, and their deaths cannot be justified as revenge, deterrence, liberation, or religious duty.

No injustice suffered by Palestinians can make the deliberate murder of Israeli children, families, commuters, elderly people, or residents of civilian communities morally acceptable. The same moral principle applies in the other direction. Deliberate or reckless violence against Palestinian civilians is equally wrong. If the immunity of civilians is to mean anything, it must apply to every civilian, not only those on one side of the conflict.

A Different Peace Requires a Different History

Political movements pass their ideas from one generation to the next through the stories they tell about the past. Those stories do not simply explain history. Those stories teach people who are innocent, who are guilty, and what the future should look like.

Governments can sign peace agreements, but peace will never last if the next generation is still taught that Jews are foreign intruders, perpetual conspirators, descendants of an ancient enemy, or temporary rulers whose sovereignty must one day come to an end. A peace agreement signed by leaders will mean very little if children are still being taught that accepting Israel is an act of betrayal.

The Transformation Must Become Institutional

There is a key role to play for religious scholars. They are in charge of explaining difficult traditions in ways that prevent them from being used to demonize Jews. There are roles for others to play in the Muslim world. For example, political leaders must stop speaking the language of peace abroad while allowing dreams of Israel’s eventual destruction at home.

The real test is not whether every Muslim agrees about Israel’s borders, history, government, or policies.

No democratic society requires everyone to think alike. The question is whether certain principles become nonnegotiable. Below are a few of those principles.

• Jews are a people, not merely a religious minority.

• Jews have a legitimate right to self-government.

• Jewish sovereignty is not inherently opposed to Islam.

• Contemporary Jews are not part of an eternal religious conspiracy.

• Israeli civilians do not lose their civilian status because of collective accusations.

• The deliberate killing of noncombatants can never be called martyrdom.

• Justice for Palestinians cannot be defined by the eventual destruction of Jewish self-government.

• A peace agreement cannot simply hide a theological or historical expectation that it will one day be undone. None of these principles requires Muslims to abandon Islam.

The Test of Finality

The real question is not whether Muslims can live alongside a Jewish state as long as it cannot be defeated. Living with Israel because it cannot be defeated is not the same thing as accepting that it has a permanent right to exist.

The real question is whether the Muslim world can accept a morally legitimate end to the conflict. An end means more than stopping the fighting. It means giving up the belief that a future generation must begin it again.

Can Muslim religious and political leaders recognize a permanent Jewish state not simply as an unavoidable fact, but as a legitimate expression of Jewish self-government?

Can they imagine justice without conquest?

Can they affirm that Jews and Palestinians both possess equal political rights? Peace becomes possible only when the existence and dignity of one people are no longer treated as obstacles to the existence and dignity of the other.

That is the real test.

The change that is needed goes far beyond Iran or Hamas. It must reach the religious ideas, historical narratives, political goals, and moral assumptions through which much of the Muslim world understands this conflict. Removing one organization while leaving the ideas that sustained it untouched will not bring the conflict to an end.

This does not mean that Muslims alone are responsible for bringing about peace, or that Israeli leaders bear no obligation to recognize Palestinian political rights. There are also Israeli and Jewish extremists who deny that Palestinians are a people, defend permanent domination, or justify violence against Palestinian civilians. They, too, must confront the beliefs that allow them to treat another people as though they have fewer rights, less dignity, or no rightful claim to the land.

Muslim moral responsibility begins with what Muslims teach, approve, celebrate, and refuse to condemn. It will begin when Muslim institutions can say—clearly, publicly, and without an unspoken reservation—that Jewish political existence is legitimate, that Jewish civilians are inviolable, and that no religious prophecy, historical grievance, or future change in power grants anyone the right to take that existence away. Without that condition, recognition is real rather than temporary.

A ceasefire can interrupt a war.

Only a transformed moral vision can declare that the war is over.

Endnotes

• Conrad Hackett, “Islam Was the World’s Fastest-Growing Religion from 2010 to 2020,” Pew Research Center, June 10, 2025, doi:10.58094/yy8g-2490.

• Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); and Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

• Moussa Abou Ramadan, “Muslim Jurists’ Criteria for the Division of the World into Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam,” in International Law and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Martti Koskenniemi, Mónica García-Salmones Rovira, and Paolo Amorosa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 219–38.

• Miriam Hoexter, Endowments, Rulers, and Community: Waqf al-Haramayn in Ottoman Algiers (Leiden: Brill, 1998); and Hamas, “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” August 18, 1988, art. 11, Avalon Project, Yale Law School.

• Hamas, A Document of General Principles and Policies, official English trans., May 1, 2017, paras. 16, 19–20.

• Gordon D. Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988); Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, “The Book of Tribulations and Portents of the Last Hour,” no. 2922, book 54, hadith 103; and David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2002).

• Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010); and Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, trans. Colin Meade (New York: Telos Press Publishing, 2007).

I begin this article with an odd statement, which is an idea I borrow from Mark Dubowitz, from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who believes that wars run on clocks, and opposing sides are rarely watching the same one. If you are a Westerner, time is of the essence. Our lives are ordered firmly by clock time, and we tend to think in terms of a single clock. Wars do not operate that way. Opposing sides rarely experience time in the same manner, and each may be watching a different clock.

The first clock is the military clock. The military clock measures the rate at which armed forces can achieve strategic objectives. It asks how long will it take to render the enemy incapable of continuing the war? This is where military planners look at markers like the opposition’s infrastructure, weaponry, and capacity to keep fighting, then estimate how long it will take to destroy the enemy. .

The second clock shifts from the battlefield to political survival. It asks a different question than the military clock: not who is winning the war, but whether the opposing regime can stay in power. It is how long the opposing regime can endure military setbacks, economic pressure, and growing unrest before its authority begins to fracture. In some cases, a regime may have an incredibly weakened military, yet still survive politically. Conversely it may be strong militarily while weakening internally.

A government can lose on the battlefield without immediately losing its grip on power. Just as importantly, military strength alone cannot guarantee a regime’s survival. Internal conflict, economic hardship, and eroding public confidence can prove just as dangerous.

The third clock is democratic political will, things like elections, public opinion, and the financial cost of keeping a war going. Democratic societies are concerned with and must account for elections, public opinion, financial costs, casualties, coalition pressures, and competing national priorities. A country may still have the military strength to continue, but these factors often determine whether it does.

But there is another kind of clock, what I call the Fourth Clock, that Western policymakers and strategists tend to miss. It does not measure weapons, political survival, or the voting booth. It measures whether those involved believe they possess the moral and religious authority to declare the conflict over. If God has assured victory, then the war is not over until victory is reached. Thus, the leaders don’t possess the political, religious or moral authority to declare the conflict the struggle has legitimately ended and that further fighting is no longer required. I call this the Fourth Clock, the theological clock.

The Fourth Clock is different because it is not governed primarily by military realities or political calculations. It is governed by theology. This clock is what many Western experts can’t wrap their head around. The problem looks very different when those leading the war believe they do not have the authority to end it. There can be negotiations take place, and agreememnts can be reached, and evena cease fire can be annoiunced, but this doesn’t mean peace is on the horizon. If the divine purpose has noit been completed, then ending it becomes more than a political decision. It becomes a theological one.

In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, this question cannot be separated from the regime’s understanding of divine sovereignty, sacred obligation, and history. If Iran’s leaders believe the Mahdi, who is hidden from the world (in occultation) and therefore unreachable, is the only authority who can legitimately end the war, and that he has commanded them to fight against those he considers usurpers of his rightful rule, then how can the war ever end? Military setbacks may prolong the struggle, political pressures may complicate it, and public opinion may fluctuate, but none of those factors alone determines when the conflict has reached its legitimate conclusion. Why? It is because God is on the side of the regime, and no matter the current setbacks, he assures success.

This is one reason Western strategists often misjudge the staying power of ideological regimes. Analysts assess the war through the prism of a cost/benefit analysis and conclude when costs exceed benefits or when negotiations produce an acceptable political settlement. Underlying this assessment is a Western assumption that governments—not religious authority—can decide when compromise serves the national interest. But Iran’s revolutionary ideology is different. Their leaders look at their roles differently than Westerners. Instead of seeing themselves at the authors of a particular strategy, they see themselves as stewards of a divine mission. For them, the central question has little to do with if continuing is a prudent strategy, but whether ending it would constitute disobedience to what they understand to be God’s will.

I’m not arguing that Iran ignores military realities and economic pressures, or even the politics happening within its own country. A ceasefire may be seen as a tactical necessity, and negotiations may happen to gain a strategic advantage. But neither signals that the conflict has been morally or religiously concluded. As long as the regime believes that its mission remains unfinished, the struggle is not over. Instead, it is just suspended. The Fourth Clock therefore measures something the first three cannot: the perceived theological legitimacy to declare that history’s sacred task has been completed.

Endnotes

Dubowitz, Mark. Interview by John Spencer. “No March on Tehran: The Military Logic of the Iran War.” The Iran Breakdown. Foundation for Defense of Democracies. April 23, 2026. https://www.fdd.org/podcasts/2026/04/23/no-march-on-tehran-the-military-logic-of-the-iran-war/

There are many different ways to examine Hamas and what drives its ideology. Many people examine it through a sociological lens where things like colonialism, occupation, poverty, and political grievance are treated as the primary explanations for its rise and appeal. Others use the lens of nationalism to explain Palestinian dispossession, military occupation, and the struggle for self-determination. Still others look at it through a political lens, seeing Hamas as a political organization and its governing of Gaza and its effort to build legitimacy. Another way to approach the conflict is to look at the story Hamas tells Palestinians in Gaza through its speeches, religious teaching, media, and political messages.

My approach is to examine Hamas through a theological lens. While the aforementioned lenses can illuminate some aspects of understanding Hamas, the larger issue is that they obscure the religious ideas through which Hamas interprets the conflict, defines its enemies, and justifies violence. I believe that Hamas cannot be fully understood without taking seriously its theological worldview, which places the present conflict within a much larger sacred history. Hamas’s most enduring weapon is not a rocket, a tunnel, or a military battalion, but an interpretive system.

Hamas’s theology tells its followers what Palestine is, how Jews should be understood, and why the existence of Israel cannot be accepted. Its view of Jews draws on its interpretations of the Qur’an, hadith, tafsir, and later religious polemics. The same theology gives meaning to Palestinian suffering and teaches that even a serious defeat must never be treated as final. It does not merely explain the conflict, but turns the conflict into a sacred struggle in which compromise can be condemned by Hamas as betrayal, violence can be defended as obedience to God, and endurance becomes evidence of faithfulness.

That theological logic is precisely what Western accounts tend to miss.

Because many Western accounts of Hamas treat its theology as secondary to its political grievances, they often misunderstand how the movement defines its goals, interprets events, and justifies its actions. For example, Western observers sometimes view Hamas as an organization whose religious language is used to give emotional force to political grievances. The Islamic vocabulary is used but it is largely a cultural wrapping around an essentially modern struggle, and this vocabulary interprets things like occupation, displacement, settlement expansion, and the blockade of Gaza. This gets the relationship between religion and politics backward. Hamas does not simply use theology to lend religious weight to political grievances. Its theology shapes how those grievances are understood, why they exist, and what Hamas believes it is permitted—or required—to do in response. For Hamas, politics is one of the places where its religious convictions are put into practice.

Those grievances are real, and Hamas has learned how to use them to its advantage. But they do not tell us everything about what the movement believes it is fighting for. Hamas is not simply a Palestinian nationalist group with an Islamic identity added on. It calls itself the Islamic Resistance Movement, presents Islam as the foundation of its goals and principles, and understands the struggle for Palestine as part of a much larger religious mission.

The 1988 covenant draws on Islamic theology and anti-Jewish language to frame the conflict as a religious obligation, not just a political one. It allows Hamas to present Palestine as an Islamic endowment, then invoking jihad, and places the conflict within sacred history. The 2017 document seeks to cover up the theological commitment by cloaking it in political language, distinguishing Jews from “the Zionist project.” Hamas uses this clever tactic to present itself as an Islamic Palestinian national liberation movement.

The point is not that politics, nationalism, or Palestinian suffering are unimportant. They clearly matter. But my point is that Hamas operates inside of a religious framework that tells Hamas what the conflict is ultimately about, and what counts as victory. If Hamas continues to be treated as a conventional political movement, there is hope that it will abandon its deepest commitments if the right agreement is offered. This, my friend, is snake oil. Hamas may change its language, make temporary compromises, or adapt its tactics, but the religious beliefs that give the struggle its meaning still remain at the heart of the movement.

Endnotes

“The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” August 18, 1988, arts. 5–15, Avalon Project, Yale Law School

Hamas, “A Document of General Principles and Policies,” May 1, 2017, paras. 1–3, 7–9, and 14–26, Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question

In Hamas’s Islamist theology, Palestine is an Islamic waqf (a religious endowment held in trust for God) that no political leader or generation possesses the authority to surrender. This conviction transforms any compromise or political concession into an act of religious betrayal. Negotiations are not judged according to whether they improve Palestinian lives or would produce a viable state. They are rejected because if they recognize Jewish sovereignty over any part of the land, it would violate the aforementioned divine command.

This is why Hamas does not approach negotiations in the same way that a conventional nationalist movement might. Hamas has at times held elections, agreed to ceasefires, and entered political talks, but none of this signals acceptance of a permanent settlement. Hamas will make tactical concessions when they serve its immediate interests. while continuing to reject the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty over the land.

Even Hamas’s 2017 political document accepted a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders only as a temporary compromise. It did not recognize Israel or give up Hamas’s claim to the rest of the land. For Hamas, compromise is not merely a practical bargain involving land, security guarantees, and political recognition. Ending Israeli control of Gaza and the West Bank is only part of Hamas’s goal. Its vision still includes all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

This makes the destruction of Israel an organizing principle of Hamas’s ideology, which is reflected in its earlier covenant. In that covenant, reflected in leaflets, speeches, and educational materials repeatedly describe Israel’s elimination as historically necessary and religiously guaranteed. Hamas is committed to this goal publicly, and doesn’t hide its intentions behind diplomatic language. It announces that Palestine could be liberated only through jihad and that no political settlement could permanently resolve the conflict.

It is important to point out that Hamas’s enemy is not only Israel. Hamas’s defenders frequently insist that the movement is anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic. Hamas may now claim that its enemy is Zionism rather than Jews, but that does not erase the openly anti-Jewish language and conspiracy theories in its founding covenant. The distinction is important in principle, since opposition to a government or political movement is not necessarily hatred of a people. But here I return to Hamas’s own rhetoric, which should destroy that distinction. Hamas’s propaganda does not limit its accusations to Israeli policies, its military actions, or its political leaders. Instead it speaks about Jews as a collective people who posses an essentially corrupt and malevolent character.

In A Lethal Obsession, Robert Wistrich shows that Hamas draws on long traditions of antisemitism and combines them into a single strategy. For example, it adopts medieval accusations of Jewish treachery, it employs the statements in the Quran that degrades Jews by animal imagery, relegating them to apes and pigs, invokes apocalyptic traditions about the killing of Jews that are found in the Hadith literature, and incorporates modern European conspiracy theories.

They also echo the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated text that claimed Jews secretly controlled world affairs. These conspiracy theories fit into that same broader narrative, in which Jews supposedly dominate finance, media, revolutionary movements, international institutions, and global politics. Hamas’s multifaceted propaganda campaign has blamed Jews for wars, social disorder, atheism, sexual immorality, communism, capitalism, and the erosion of religious faith.

Hamas is not simply criticizing Israeli policy, but offering a totalized conspiracy theory in which Jewish agency explains nearly every form of disorder in the modern world. Once this worldview takes hold, Jews are no longer seen as ordinary people with different beliefs and interests. They become the hidden cause of history’s corruption. Once this happens, violence against them is not portrayed as murder, but as saving the world from a supernatural enemy.

It is important to understand that Hamas is not simply a nationalist movement seeking better borders or political independence. Believing this propaganda is to make a horrible mistake. Hamas’s struggle against Israel is not merely political.

It comes from a religious and ideological worldview that rejects Jewish sovereignty. They see territorial compromise as betrayal, and present violence as a sacred obligation. This should galvanize people to stand against this hateful ideology, but right now, Hamas is winning the narrative war and normalizing the idea that their violence is justified.

Endnotes

1. Hamas, “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” August 18, 1988, arts. 11 and 13. Article 11 defines Palestine as an Islamic waqf that no ruler or organization may surrender; Article 13 rejects negotiated settlements as contrary to Hamas’s principles. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

2. Hamas, “A Document of General Principles and Policies,” May 1, 2017, paras. 2–3 and 18–21. The document defines Palestine as extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, accepts a state along the 1967 borders as a “formula of national consensus,” but refuses to recognize Israel or relinquish the rest of Palestine.

3. Hamas, “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” preamble and arts. 6–8, 13, 15, 22, and 32. These passages address the elimination of Israel, jihad, the rejection of political settlements, alleged Jewish control of wars and institutions, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

4. Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010), Qur’an 2:65; 5:60; 7:163–166.

On July 15, Vice President JD Vance advanced a troubling narrative on the Joe Rogan Podcast echoed a rhetorical framework that has become closely associated with Tucker Carlson’s commentary on Israel than Donald Trump, who is the one whose policies he should be defending, not undermining.

The central narrative he constructs in this interview is one that closely resembles Tucker Carlson’s ideas on Israel that has spent the last few years developing. Vance does not repeat Carlson’s language verbatim. Instead, he echoes many of the same assumptions about Israeli influence, American foreign policy, and the motivations of pro-Israel policymakers.

First, Vance advances an all-too-familiar accusation about Israel in that it supposedly possesses extraordinary influence over American politics. This is a source of a conspiracy theory that is often leveled against Israel and distorts what is really going on. According to this narrative, there are pro-Israel advocacy groups, donors, and lobbying organizations that exercise a level of political power that far exceeds that of other interest groups. What he leaves out is that almost every nation invests in efforts to influence public opinion in line with its national interests. The implication that Vance advances is that Israel is especially guilty of influencing our elected officials to prioritize Israel’s preferences because they are unable or unwilling to resist this influence.

Second, certain Israeli officials secretly finance American influencers and media campaigns. Here, the term is “secretly. “This is a conspiratorial accusation that apparently only applies to Israel. That description would be accurate when discussing Qatari, Russian, or Chinese influence on these formats. Applying conspiratorial language selectively to Israel suggests that Israel alone exercises hidden and uniquely sinister control over American public discourse. Here, he advanced a familiar conspiratorial narrative of manipulating American politics through secret influence rather than through the same forms of diplomacy, advocacy, and public engagement practiced by many other states.

These allegations suggest that Israel covertly cultivates journalists, commentators, and online personalities to shape public opinion in its favor. The result is portraying the relationship that America has with Israel as being manufactured rather than reflecting genuine political or moral convictions.

The effect of Vance’s statements is to portray the U.S.-Israel relationship as the product of hidden manipulation rather than the result of genuinely held political judgments, strategic interests, or moral convictions. In this way, he makes support for Israel an illegitimate position to have that well-meaning people can disagree on. Instead, he treats it as evidence that public discourse has been secretly engineered.

Third, those influence campaigns supposedly distort American foreign policy. According to this narrative, U.S. strategic decisions are not primarily driven by American national interests but by narratives deliberately crafted to benefit Israel. This Tucker Carlson-like argument that closely mirrors Tucker Carlson’s repeated claim that Washington’s policies toward the Middle East is a product of manipulation rather than independent judgment. Instead of framing the debate correctly, namely a debate about democracy, shared strategic interests, or sincerely held moral convictions, he frames it as evidence that American policymakers have been misled by Israeli influence.

The danger here is that this statement frames every American decision toward Israel, ranging from military assistance and intelligence cooperation to diplomatic support at the United Nations, as not a product of normal policy deliberation but as proof of hidden Israeli control. Once this assumption is accepted, disagreement with the accusation itself can be dismissed as further evidence of the influence campaign’s success. This is where the Vice President of the United States echoes similar tropes from the podcast sphere, such as those of Tucker Carlson, Candice Owens, and Meghan Kelly. These ideas become accepted norms and are interesting evidence that people’s expressions of support for Israel is treated as confirmation that American policy has been captured rather than freely chosen.

Fourth, pro-Israel politicians become instruments of a foreign government rather than defenders of American interests. One of his statements seems to be directed toward Marco Rubio and possibly even Mike Huckabee. Of the two, I think Rubio is more plausible because of his stated policy positions on Iran and during his tenure as Secretary of State. Vance argued that there are Americans within the administration who oppose negotiations; according to him, some of these hawks have tried to derail them. He charges that those who embrace those policies side with Israel, favoring a continued military campaign “indefinitely.” Of course, the operative word here is indefinitely, and some of the criticism has been amplified by “certain elements within the Israeli government” through influence campaigns. In his telling, their support for Israel is interpreted as evidence of compromised loyalty. In other words, Israel first and not America first. This accusation shifts the debate over policy to suspicion about the motivations and independence of American political leaders.

Vance is creating a deeply asymmetrical standard. After all, have you ever heard him accuse other politicians who favor closer relations with allies of serving those governments merely because they support cooperation with them? He singles out Israel, and any support for Israel is treated as uniquely disqualifying.

Yet support for Israel is treated as a disqualifying act, as though agreement with Israeli policy automatically places an American official under suspicion. The result is that pro-Israel advocacy is no longer seen as a legitimate position within American democratic debate but as evidence of divided allegiance.

Of course, none of these claims is entirely new. What is striking is that they appear together as a coherent interpretive framework, even by the Vice President. Rather than viewing the U.S.-Israel relationship through the traditional lenses of strategic partnership, shared democratic values, or common security interests, he explains the relationship to be primarily one of hidden influence, elite manipulation, and compromised policymakers. That narrative has become a defining feature of Tucker Carlson’s commentary on Israel, and Vance reproduces many of its central assumptions.

Finally, Israel, and not Iran, is presented as the principal obstacle to peace. He presents Israeli policies as the central cause of instability in the Middle East, while Iran’s actions receive comparatively less emphasis or are treated as reactive. The effect is that he reframes the region’s conflict around Israel and not the Iranian revolutionary ambitions or the actions of its proxy groups.

The real danger of Vance’s argument is that it does not merely criticize Israel, but that he encourages Americans to view the U.S.-Israel relationship through a lens of suspicion rather than one of strategic partnership. Through he combination of allegations of hidden influence, his charge of secret media campaigns, compromised policymakers, and Israel being the primary obstacle to peace, he reproduces a framework that has become closely associated with Tucker Carlson and the populist anti-interventionist right. On this framework is accepted, any support for Israel will be received as something sinister. Conservatives should reject such a narrative framing.

To most people’s surprise, some of the most influential political alliances are not formed between ideological allies, but between ideological opponents. One of the best examples of this is what scholars call the Red-Green Alliance, which is an alliance between secular progressives and Islamists. The progressive movement promotes secularism, feminism, LGBTQ rights, and individual autonomy, while Islamists want to order public life according to the Qur’an and the Sharia. Despite these profound ideological differences, the two find common ground in their hatred toward the West, nationalism, and of course, Israel.

There is an important thing that is often not asked. Given their ideological differences, it is eminent that one side will exercise greater influence over the coalition than the other. It’s true that political alliances begin with shared grievances, but over time the movement with the more comprehensive moral framework is more likely to shape the coalition’s direction.

I will begin by looking at the progressive side of the coalition by looking to Gad Saad who offers an important insight into one dimension of this phenomenon through his concept of “suicidal empathy.” His theory helps explain why some progressives are reluctant to subject what are labeled marginalized groups or ideologies to the same level of moral scrutiny that they apply to others. Groups viewed as historically marginalized therefore acquire a degree of moral immunity from criticism because disagreement itself is interpreted as hostility toward victims. According to this view, when an individual or a group is regarded as marginalized, they acquire a kind of moral immunity from criticism because disagreement is interpreted as hostility toward victims. In many Western institutions, identity and historical oppression go hand in hand.

These frameworks define the boundaries of working relationships, which helps to explain progressive activists excuse illiberal positions with Islamists, but are unwilling to do it with Christian conservatives. Within their moral framework, the decisive issue is not the content of a group’s beliefs,but where the group is located within structures of power and oppression. Islamicist are granted the baffling courtesy and being part of marginalized groups, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. At the same time, conservative Christians are viewed as part of the privileged of society. As a result, any criticism of Islam, is often treated as reinforcing oppression, whereas criticism of the latter is regarded as an act of justice. This results in an asymmetrical moral landscape in which two groups with comparable views on issues such as sexuality or gender are judged according to different standards because of the identities they represent rather than the ideas they advocate.

The asymmetry within the coalition reflects a deeper difference than political strategy. It arises from the moral architecture of the two movements themselves. To be sure, empathy is very important as a moral virtue, but it cannot serve as an organizing principle of civilization. Every society must answer questions that extend beyond compassion if it hopes to make consistent moral judgments. Among the questions every society must answer are these: What is a society’s source of authority? After all, every society needs a final standard that determines what is true, good, and morally binding. For many progressives, moral authority is frequently located in lived experience, identity, and an evolving moral consensus, whereas Islamicists locate ultimate authority in divine revelation as expressed through the Sharia. Every moral framework must also explain how competing values should be prioritized.

Every political movement tells a story about the source of human suffering. For the progressive left, oppression functions as the central explanatory framework. History is understood largely as a struggle between marginalized groups and systems of power based on race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, or economic inequality. In this narrative, injustice persists because dominant institutions perpetuate unequal power relationships. The moral task, therefore, is to dismantle oppressive structures, amplify marginalized voices, and create more equitable social arrangements.

The Green Alliance operates from a fundamentally different theodicy. Islamist movements generally locate the world’s disorder not primarily in social structures but in humanity’s rebellion against God’s revealed will. This is a fundamental difference that sometimes Westerners are not aware of. Over time, much progressive thought has shifted from grounding morality in universal reason to grounding it in lived experience, identity, and moral sentiment. Islamists reject both approaches. For them, divine revelation—not autonomous reason or subjective feeling—remains the ultimate source of authority. Islamists reject both. For them revelation trumps both reason and feelings. From their perspective, the solution is not merely political reform but submission to God through the implementation of the Sharia and the restoration of a rightly ordered Islamic society. In this framework, justice is achieved when human life conforms to divine revelation rather than autonomous human judgment. This differs fundamentally from the progressive account of oppression, which seeks liberation through the transformation of social structures rather than submission to divine authority.

This is where Islamism has a more robust source of continued influence. It has a comprehensive understanding of authority, community, sacrifice, and moral obligation. It provides the moral framework capable of sustaining long-term political and social movements rather than a postmodern understanding that merely reacts to changing cultural conditions. It can form institutions that educate future generations and sustain long-term commitments because its members understand themselves as participating in something larger than the political moment. They are working on behalf of God, which supplies them with a divine purpose. By contrast, movements organized primarily around feelings and changing cultural priorities often revise their priorities as cultural circumstances evolve.

This explains why Islamists are good at influencing political organizations and universities. Their political vision is not limited to protest or social reform but is rooted in a comprehensive religious worldview that includes concepts such as jihad, understood by many Islamist thinkers as the obligation to struggle for the establishment and defense of God’s order in society. Whether pursued through political, social, or, in some cases, violent means, jihad functions as part of an integrated moral and theological framework rather than as a temporary political slogan.

By contrast, what Gad Saad describes as “suicidal empathy” encourages an unwillingness to critically evaluate the goals and assumptions of groups perceived as marginalized or historically oppressed. If criticism is treated as a form of victimization, progressive activists may become reluctant to examine ideological commitments—including Islamist conceptions of jihad—that conflict with their own stated commitments to liberal democracy, individual rights, or gender equality. In this sense, a coalition driven primarily by empathy may gradually yield intellectual leadership to a movement whose objectives are defined by a more comprehensive and internally coherent vision of political and religious life.

The contrast becomes even clearer when the two movements are viewed side by side. Progressive movements often derive their moral language from concepts such as equality, liberation, and historical redress. Islamist political movements derive their political vision from religious commitments that they understand to possess transcendent authority. These traditions should not be collapsed into simplistic categories, nor should all Muslim individuals or organizations be treated as sharing identical political goals. Nevertheless, where Islamist movements explicitly seek to organize political life according to religious principles, they operate from a framework that integrates theology, law, ethics, community, and political purpose into a unified vision. That comprehensive character gives such movements a different kind of organizational coherence than movements whose moral vocabulary is more fluid and responsive to changing cultural conditions.

The Red-Green Alliance therefore illustrates a broader principle about political coalitions that are at work. Alliances are not sustained merely by shared enemies but by the moral frameworks that animate them. Movements organized primarily around empathy often struggle to resist partners whose vision is destructive that Islamism is. . If my analysis is correct, the long-term question is not whether the alliance will survive but which moral framework will ultimately define it. The answer to that question should be obvious. Progressives that champion their cause for justice will have blood on their hands.

Bibliography

Qutb, Sayyid. Milestones. Revised edition. Translated by A. B. al-Mehri. Birmingham, UK: Maktabah Booksellers and Publishers, 2006.

Saad, Gad. Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. New York: Broadside Books, 2026.

Small, Charles Asher, and David Harris, hosts. “Fighting Antisemitism: The ISGAP Hour – Asra Nomani.” Featuring Asra Nomani. JBS. YouTube video. July 23, 2025.

How can a people numbering only fifteen million account for roughly one-fifth of Nobel laureates, while a civilization of nearly two billion has produced only a handful in the sciences? Between 1901 and 2025, approximately one-fifth to one-quarter of individual Nobel laureates have had Jewish ancestry despite Jews comprising only about 0.2 percent of the world’s population. By contrast, only a handful of Nobel laureates in the sciences have been Muslims or of Muslim background, depending, of course, on how one classifies religious identity. This type of disparity invites simplistic explanations. Some opt for a charge of discrimination, while others charge it is a result of hidden Jewish influence or conspiracy. Neither asks the more interesting self-reflective question. Is there a problem within the culture that is being produced?

The more important question emerges: why the disparity? The two faiths built different cultures. Over many centuries, Judaism and Islam contributed to the formation of different intellectual traditions. Jews were trained to read difficult texts and to argue with authority. They were encouraged to enter elite institutions because there wasn’t an imminent threat of blasphemy, there was tolerance for abstraction, and not everything was always concrete. There was also a survivors’ ethic that developed, given the historical struggles that Jews have faced. Because of the diaspora, they built a portable culture that encouraged education, entry into urban professions like law and economics, and the development of strong diaspora networks.

Conversely, Muslim-majority countries did not build this type of infrastructure or build institutions that protected the independent heretical scientist, for instance. I’m not targeting Islam. Instead, I am simply offering a cultural analysis. Before offering a critique, I should note that the Medieval Islamic civilization made extraordinary scientific contributions. The question is not whether Muslims once produced great scientists. They unquestionably did. The real question is why modern Muslim-majority societies have not sustained those conditions in the same way that Western and Jewish intellectual cultures have.

During the Abbasid Caliphate, it stood at the forefront of scientific inquiry. There was Baghdad’s House of Wisdom, where great intellectual works from Greek, Persian, and Indian cultures in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine were translated into Arabic.

Scientific achievement depends on not just intelligence or even education. It requires institutions that protect intellectual freedom and reward independent inquiry. Nobel Prize-winning discoveries happen when there is a climate in which scholars are free to challenge accepted ideas and pursue controversial research initiatives. They were then able to publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal without fear of reprisal. These environments are not developed all of a sudden but take decades, even centuries.

Mere numbers do not produce Nobel Prize-level scientists. It is produced through a culturally constructed pipeline that moves from literacy to elite education to an emphasis on funding research. But it doesn’t stop there. There must be institutional freedom, the development of global networks, and the establishment of an ethic of dissent that is not penalized. After decades, as the system develops,s there is a pipeline that is created that fosters success. Botticini and Eckstein believe that Torah literacy and an emphasis on education fostered unusual literacy, which was rare at the time.

I am not arguing that the Jewish achievements were not simply caused by religion. The existence of many secular and atheist Jewish Nobel laureates makes clear that Judaism’s influence is cultural as well as theological. So, religious inheritance did matter because it fostered a civilizational habit that cultivated respect for study, mastery of texts, sharpening of the memory, and family investment in education. Once Jews entered Britain and the United States, they had developed a portable capital that made them successful.

Jewish success reflects a broader historical development beyond its religious tradition, which contributes to its success. For centuries, Jews resided in urban areas and entered professions that required such things as literacy, analytical reasoning, and specialized knowledge in fields such as law, medicine, and finance. For diaspora communities, education became the de facto wealth that couldn’t be confiscated. When barriers were removed in universities, they were exceptionally well positioned to flourish within those institutions.

When one examines Islamic cultures, one sees, for the most part, the opposite. I am not arguing that Muslim cultures were incapable of scientific advancement, because there is spotted evidence that they can. But for the most part, many contemporary Muslim-majority societies have struggled to produce the institutional environments associated with Nobel-level scientific research.

In the vast majority of Muslim countries, the highest-status figure is not the one who discovers something that was previously hidden from everyone, but the one who serves as the guardian, the cleric, the patriarch, or whoever defends communal honor. Sure, the intellectual is tolerated when he confirms the nation’s greatness or success, but becomes dangerous when he reveals its stagnation. What this protectionism produces is a culture rich in memory, which remembers the Islamic Golden Age as proof of Islamic success rather than treating modern underachievements as proof of institutional failure.

There is high support for making Sharia law the law of the land, with some even supporting the death penalty for leaving Islam. This matters because a culture that attaches legal or social danger to religious dissent teaches the people that some questions are too dangerous to ask. But To get the results they do, Nobel Prize winners ask dangerous questions. So, the problem is not that Islam lacks intelligent people. It lacks the cultural institutional machinery to produce world-renowned thinkers who think outside of the box.

When there are Nobel Prize-winning Muslims, they do their research in Western institutions. The problem is that in Muslim-majority countries, they are not funding research. But they are creating an anti-intellectual climate that prevents freedom of thought.

I could sum things up this way. Civilizations produce what they reward. If a society prizes things like literacy, disciplined inquiry, institutional independence, and intellectual risk, discovery becomes increasingly likely. If it prizes conformity, discovery becomes more difficult. The disparity between Jewish and Muslim Nobel laureates is therefore less a mystery than a reflection of the kinds of institutions different societies have spent centuries building.

Works Cited

Pew Research Center, The World’s Religious Groups: How Their Sizes Changed from 2010 to 2020.

Nobel Foundation, All Nobel Prizes (1901–2025).

Jewish Virtual Library, Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates.

Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492 (Princeton University Press, 2012).

Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (Routledge, 1998).

Pew Research Center, The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (2013).

I am asking you to consider supporting me as I pursue a significant scholarly opportunity in 2026.

I am deeply honored to have been invited by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy to participate as a Scholar-in-Residence/Visiting Scholar in its ISGAP–Oxbridge Summer Institute, which will be held at the Møller Institute, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.

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The total cost is approximately $4,000, which will cover all of the program fees, lodging, meals, airfare, ground transportation, and any other necessary travel expenses.

Your gift would accomplish far more than paying for travel expenses. It would enable me to spend two weeks studying alongside some of the world’s leading scholars on contemporary antisemitism.

The research and relationships that I will develop will prove to be invaluable as it will be used to directly shape my future writing, university outreach, church training, and public speaking.

In the times in which we live, antisemitism is growing across universities, social media, and the broader culture, I want to help Christians, Jews, and the general public understand what is happening and respond with both conviction and intellectual credibility.

Would you consider partnering with me by giving toward the $4,000 needed for this opportunity?

Your gift would help make this possible, and I would be deeply grateful for your support.

It’s a holiday weekend, and Faith and I just got back from getting ice cream. In case you are wondering, Faith got the Mocha MooLatté, I think it’s called, and I got the Cherry Dilly Bar. After all, I am watching my weight. This was the kickoff to the holiday weekend. Before I begin enjoying the other festivities, I thought I would write a blog about something that I think is very important for people to understand. 

One of the hardest questions I couldn’t immediately answer on October 7 when I was in London was why so many people reached their conclusions about what has taken place so quickly. I witnessed protests the very next day. I remember being stunned at what I saw. There was no empathy, no mourning, at least from what I gathered from what I saw on the streets. The anger and hatred were almost palpable, as people were already protesting against Israel. I was dumbfounded. Of the 21 Uber rides I took, the drivers shared the same hostility. It was as if God had vindicated Islam. 

I knew that Islam was both a spiritual and political religion, but I thought the political manifestation happened in non-Western countries. This was my wake-up call, and this is why I write and speak as I do. I now feel the clarion call not just to love Muslims but also to warn people of the danger of the political side of Islam.

As I just mentioned, Islam is political, and by this time, no one should be surprised. But that is not the case. Most people are familiar with the Islamic worship service characterized by bowing, praying, and reciting the Quran. The spiritual component also extends to practices such as repentance, judgment, and help to form people’s souls. They believe that this explains the entirety of the religion of Islam, and from some Muslims, that is true. This is how they see there faith.

But it also has a political opponent, which people are becoming increasingly familiar with. This is despite the fact that a strong movement who continues to shield Islam from criticism.

There are at least two perspectives one can take. Either one can be a moral idealist and and interpret the evidence through an idealized view of Islam that accentuates the positive and denies any negative characteristics. This perspective tends to emphasize Islam’s highest ethical and moral ideas, while minimizing and explaining away anything that complicates that picture. The other approach is that of the moral realist. Rather than beginning with an idealistic view of Islam, the moral realist begins with looking at the evidence. He or she examines things like the primary sources, considers the historical record, and evaluates Islam as it has been understood and practiced across the centuries. The goal is not to defend or condemn Islam in advance, but to arrive at conclusions that are grounded in evidence rather than aspiration.

I think the latter view is very important. Americans should love their Muslim neighbors, but they should draw their understanding of the political side of Islam from the canonical sources. We should be aware that for many Muslims, the political side is vital for Islam and its mission. We should take those ideas at face value rather than impose a Western assumptions that all religions are basically the same. The political side is grounded in the Qur’an but is then interpreted through the Hadith and the classical tafsir tradition. These canonical sources concern law, governance, justice, and the ordering of public life. The goal is to expand Islam so society can be ordered under God’s law. The pursuit is to continue until every person has been called to submit to Allah’s final revelation. The danger, of course, is when political power becomes the measure of religious truth, and people seek to spread Islamic rule in the West.

Given the Islamic mandate, Islamists believe Allah will bring about success if Muslims surrender to Him. The current state of the Muslim world seems to argue against this, as they lag far behind in almost every economic and power category when compared to the West and Israel. Therefore, in the mind of many Islamists, they have been humiliated, colonized, and defeated, and they need to be vindicated on behalf of Allah. 

Every movement that promises restoration eventually faces the same question: if God’s truth is final and victory is promised, why has restoration not come? One option is to look inward and do some soul-searching, but most nations are not willing to do so. When a movement seeks redemption, it often looks for an obstacle to explain why redemption has been delayed. The obstacle becomes not just an enemy. Overcoming that obstacle is the key that makes religious history coherent. 

This means that the same enemy, the West and Israel, can now explain every disappointment, military defeat, political failure, and cultural humiliation. It’s always the West and the Jews. This is why Islamists can work so comfortably with many progressives. They both have the same enemy. But for Islam, they are portrayed as recurring opponents of God’s purposes. 

Hamas brought this idea of political Islam to light. Civil society must respond, and must stand against this influence.

One of the most unsettling passages in the New Testament appears in 2 Thessalonians, where Paul introduces a phrase that, at first, may take us aback. He says that God will send a “strong delusion.” After all, it doesn’t make it easy to reconcile this idea with the rest of what the Bible teaches. Doesn’t it teach that Satan is the author of deception? Why, then, would Paul speak of God giving people over to deception?

I’ll begin by laying out the context for this passage. Reports were circulating that the day of the Lord had already begun, so the people at the church became unsettled. As a result, the people became afraid. Some people thought they might have missed Christ’s return, or possibly they were living under God’s final judgment.

Paul’s response to their confusion also helps us understand what he later means by God’s “strong delusion.” Paul refrained from feeding speculation about the end times. Instead, he sought to restore confidence in the Church at Thessalonica. Paul spoke of a great rebellion that must come first, led by the “man of lawlessness,” who would be revealed at the end, exalting himself against God and deceiving many. Only afterward would Christ come and destroy him “whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming” (NKJV). Paul’s emphasis is not satisfying curiosity about the future, but encouraging believers to remain steadfast in the truth.

The “man of lawlessness” represents the climax of humanity’s rebellion against God. There have been various interpretations of this verse, ranging from a future figure associated with the anti-Christ to a recurring source of political and religious power that opposes God, or an already/not yet scenario. Whichever view is true, Paul’s point remains: there is evil that not only opposes God but also imitates and rivals God’s work.

The rebellion Paul describes is not just the result of outside forces. It succeeds because deception makes evil appear convincing, and verse 9 explains how. Paul makes this clear when he says, “the coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders.” Satan doesn’t just oppose God, but he also counterfeits his activities, making miracles serve a falsehood. They persuade people that the lie is true.

Beginning in verse 10, Paul says, “and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” According to many New Testament scholars, the Greek literally says “did not receive the love of the truth.”

According to Paul, the problem was not that they lacked evidence or intelligence; they just didn’t love the truth. In Scripture, truth is not merely information but a moral commitment, grounded in God’s own nature. Therefore, loving the truth involves more than just agreeing with what is true. It also includes a willingness to submit to reality, even when it confronts our deepest assumptions.

There are powerful forces at work. Platforms like podcasts, YouTube, X, and TikTok create environments in which outrage is rewarded, and algorithms amplify emotional certainty rather than careful, thoughtful thinking. These platforms don’t create deception. Instead, they accelerate it.

Christians are not immune to these cultural pressures. They rightly distrust institutions, but that distrust can feed sinful attitudes such as suspicion, followed by cynicism, and finally, conspiratorial thinking. At that point, almost any explanation becomes believable, as it confirms our suspicions.

I’ll offer a simple example of what this looks like in practice. Imagine you log onto your phone and suddenly receive a notice informing you of a tragedy unfolding somewhere in the world. Within minutes, you notice that social media is filled with so-called authoritative voices claiming they already know who is responsible. Then suddenly millions of people share the explanation on their favorite platforms before investigators have gathered any of the facts.

Instead of rushing to conclusions, we should be willing to wait, ask careful questions, weigh the evidence, and admit when we do not know. Loving the truth sometimes means resisting the pressure to have an immediate answer.

Are we learning to love the truth more than narratives that satisfy our frustrations? Every generation creates explanatory systems to make sense of the world. When we take a moment and look at the landscape in which we find ourselves, Paul’s warning is especially relevant in an age of podcasts, viral videos, social media, and endless political commentary that feeds our fallen nature and its propensity to cultivate rage and resentment. We are not called to be gullible or cynical, but are called to be people who love the truth.

This means Christians need to set their minds to resisting the temptation to explain every crisis by searching for a hidden villain behind it. The desire for certainty is understandable. Christians should be careful to approach issues empirically and ask whether they are supported by evidence or merely appeal to our fear and suspicion. We must reject explanations that may be emotionally satisfying but appeal to our sinful nature rather than to reality.

Most importantly, we must return to the book of Genesis again and again, where Scripture teaches us what is truly wrong with the world. The root problem is not a hidden conspiracy but human sin. That is why Christians must pursue truth with humility, speak it in love, and refuse to surrender to either naïveté or conspiracy thinking.