Imran Khan, the 20th century cricketer who reinvented himself as a 21st century quasi-Islamist, is among the candidates competing to become the next chancellor of the University of Oxford. 

But Pakistan’s former prime minister, currently an inmate at Rawalpindi’s Radiala prison, is not in the contest to succeed Chris Patten because he is vain. 

He has, you see, a vision. As he told the Oxford Student, “it is time for Oxford University to reflect the diversity of the world”. Electing Khan, who turned 72 this month, as the next chancellor would not only “inspire young people from all corners of the world” – it would also raise Oxford up as “a shining example of inclusivity”. 

The onus is now on the alumni and staff who make up Oxford’s electoral college. 

Are they ready to drag Oxford out of a millennium of darkness and make it an inclusive institution by voting for a candidate who lauded the resurrection of the Taliban – which recently banned Afghanistan’s women from receiving an education – as “a blessing from Allah”? 

Are they willing to exhibit their belief in diversity by casting their ballots for the erstwhile leader of an “Islamic republic” where blasphemy is a capital offence and religious minorities – formally granted the status of second-tier citizens in law – are constitutionally prohibited from occupying the state’s high offices? 

Are they prepared to inspire young people by opting for a figure who in 2012 justified the Taliban’s “holy war” at the hospital where Malala Yousafzai had received lifesaving emergency treatment? 

Those who remember Khan as a cricketer or the dim-witted tabloid fodder in 1980s have missed his mutation over the past two decades into a religious obscurantist. Elected prime minister in 2018 in a vote allegedly manipulated by what Pakistan’s human rights commission decried as the “blatant, aggressive, and unabashed” interference of his sponsors in the armed forces, Khan pledged to remake Pakistan into a new Medina. 

Aided by his third-wife – a veiled clairvoyant who claimed to have had visions of his triumphs – he subordinated his temporal duties to the task of establishing himself as the champion of the Islamic ummah. His religious fervour was tempered by cowardice. Denouncing Western values and lashing out at France for preaching free speech, he kowtowed to China and defended Beijing as it perpetrated in Xinjiang the worst sustained atrocities against a Muslim population in the 21st century. 

Last October, the Election Commission of Pakistan convicted Khan of pocketing gifts from foreign dignitaries, disqualified him from membership of parliament, and barred him from public office for five years. A subsequent investigation published by the Financial Times disclosed that a Pakistani conman facing a possible sentence of 291 years in a US jail for financial fraud had funnelled millions of dollars to Khan’s party via a charitable front. Khan denies all these allegations and insists they are politically motivated.

This week, we learnt that Khan’s conviction may disqualify him from holding the chancellor’s office. It catches the breath that, despite this sordid record, there are public figures in Britain still shilling for Khan. 

Khan’s candidacy is a measure of his contempt for Oxford and the world – intellectual, political, cultural – that created it. His invocation of freighted catchwords like diversity and inclusivity to burnish his pitch is a reminder that this genre of charlatanry has a long and wretched pedigree. 

Two generations ago, VS Naipaul wrote about the ease with which religious reactionaries not unlike Khan were able to prey on the decencies of those they intended to dupe: “They spoke correct words about the difference between poor countries and rich, South and North. They spoke of the crime of racial discrimination and the brotherhood of man. They appealed to the ideals of the alien civilisations whose virtue they denied at home.” 

Khan is neither a victim of political persecution nor the tribune of the oppressed. Electing him as the next chancellor of Oxford will not, as the journalist Peter Oborne absurdly claims, “send a powerful message to the world about UK values”. It will demonstrate that the UK has no values at all. 

Kapil Komireddi is the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, which was recently published in a revised and updated paperback edition by Hurst. Follow him on X.com/@kapskom