A major site of employment which attracted Pakistani Muslims from Sheffield and Bradford. According to the newsreel source linked to...
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Muslim History in Oxford
The Didicot Ordinance Depot at the Vauxhall Barracks, established during the First World War, was a major site of Pakistani...
The UK’s first halal farm, located in Cherwell. In 2002, Lutfi Radwan, a lecturer at the University of Oxford, and...
Site of the first mixed congregational prayer led by a woman (Prof Amina Wadud) in the UK, 18th October 2008....
The Oxford Martin School was the sity of of the Oxford Indian Institute, which provided training to Indian civil servants....
Next to the Pitt Rivers Museum is the sire of current Oxford Islamic Society meeting space. There is a rich...
Lubna Arshad became the first Muslim Lord Mayor of Oxford, May 2023.
On 3 December 1964, Malcolm X addressed the Oxford Union when he partook in the 'Queen and Country' debate. He...
An anti-racist organisation founded by University of Oxford students in 1956. Its purpose was "To arouse among members of the...
Somerville College houses archival materials related to the Oxford Majlis, which was a student society modeled after the Cambridge Majlis...
Brothers Wasif Ali and Naseer Ali Mirza became the first racialised minority and Indian students to be enrolled at Trinity...
Founded in 1678, the Ashmolean Museum features an Islamic and Middle East Gallery which exhibits a selection of artifacts made...
Al Shami restaurant was the site of Oxford's first halal butchers, and was established in the 1960s. Prior to its...
Jamal's Tandoori Restaurant has been a significant place of networking for Muslims across the city. During the 1950s and 1960s,...
Founded in 1921, City of Oxford Motor Services Limited was an important site of employment in the 1950s and 1960s...
In trying to identify some of the earliest Muslim students to matriculate at the University after the enactment of the...
A mosque and welfare house opened in 1984 to primarily serve the Deobandi sect of Muslims living in Oxford. The...
The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies was founded in 1985 as a centre for the advanced study of Islam and...
Central Oxford Mosque remains one of the largest places of workship for Muslims in the city. The mosque was founded...
This was an Ahmadiyya Mosque established in the 1980s. It was located on Cowley Road, but the precise location is...
EMBS was founded in 1988 as a self-help business service for racialised minority groups in Oxford. One of its founders...
Founded in 1968, the Bath Street mosque was the first formal site of worship for Oxford's Muslim community, and largely...
The Bangladesh Islamic Centre was founded in the 1980s by the first generation of Bangladeshis to settle in Oxford. Today,...
The association, which was founded in the 1960s by Sher Afzal Khan, was one of the first of its kind...
3 December 1964
Oxford Union
On 3 December 1964, Malcolm X addressed the Oxford Union when he partook in the 'Queen and Country' debate. He was invited by Eric Abrahams, a Rhodes Scholar from Jamaica and president of the Oxford Union. The motion for the debate was 'extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue'. Before his visit to Oxford, Malcolm had travelled across Africa and the Middle East, where he encountered Algerian resistance fighters and African nationalists. He also went to Smethwick, where he was invited by Avtar Singh Jouhl of the Indian Workers' Association, where racialised minority residents were regularly confronted with racist violence, and were contending with the election campaign of Conservative MP candidate Peter Griffiths, in what is now dubbed as the most racist election campaign in British history.
Malcolm was experiencing an intellectual and ideological transformation which culminated with his trip to Oxford, months before his assassination. The debate was also moment of national significance, as it was filmed and broadcasted by the BBC.
The Oxford Union has long been a site of intellectual exchange in which student activists have often engaged, by partaking in debates or protesting the presence of controversial figures. The Middle East Society, for example, proposed the motion 'Israel's refusal to the political rights of Palestinians has been obstructive to peace in the Middle East' in a joint event with the Oxford Union Michaelmas 1987. Their speakers included Edward Said. The only other event they hosted that term was a lecture titled 'The Role of Women in Islam', delivered by Cambridge professor Bassim Mussalam.
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Sources and Attribution
See: Stephen Tuck, The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union : A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).
JMOX SOC Box M9, Middle East Society Michaelmas 1987 term card, John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Oxford.
Aleena Din - Aleena is a historian of gender, class and race in modern Britain. Her DPhil research, which was completed at Balliol College and the Faculty of History in 2022, focuses on the migration, settlement and labour experiences of working-class British-Pakistani women who settled in Middlesbrough and Oldham between 1962 and 2002. Aleena is the co-investigator of the community history project 'A Muslim History of Oxford', in collaboration with the national heritage organisation 'Everyday Muslim'. In addition, she is a postdoctoral research associate for the digital humanities project, 'Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830 to the Present' at the University of Bristol (2025).
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