Pandaemonium

NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE

April 13, 2022 by Kenan Malik

. Here are details of my new book, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, bublished by Hurst and available from the usual places. In Britain: Bookshop, Waterstones, Book Depository, Blackwell’s, Amazon, Foyle’s, etc. Or, in America Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s, Amazon, Tattered Cover, Schuler. Or Australia: Angus & Robertson, Amazon, Dymocks. Or, best of all, order it at your local independent bookshop. This is the blurb from the Hurst brochure: […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik, Not so Black and White

ROTTEN FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE

March 30, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the state of the welfare state in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 26 March 2023, under the headline “From the cradle to the grave, there is something rotten in the state of welfare”. From the cradle to the grave. Once that phrase was a description of the ambition of the welfare state. Now, it is an illustration of how far that old vision has frayed. An illustration, too, of the extent to which […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: benefit sanctions, childcare, inequality, jeremy hunt, life expectancy, poverty, state pensions, welfare state, workfare

AN ECHO OF BRITAIN’S SHAMEFUL PAST

March 23, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the historical echoes of current British asylum policies, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 19 March 2023, under the headline “‘Stop the boats’ does echo the language of the 30s – but those words were English”. It has become a familiar political pas de deux. One side draws an analogy between some current policy or practice and 1930s Germany, as if Nazis provide the only measure of moral degradation. The other side uses outrage at […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: aliens act 1905, antisemitism, channel migrants, gary lineker, immigration policy, internment camps, jewish refugees, louise london, nazism, rwanda deportation scheme, stop the boats

VERMEER AND THE INVOCATION OF THE HUMAN

March 16, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the beauty and significance of Vermeer, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 12 March 2023, under the headline “Vermeer’s luminous interiors gave us a new way into the inner worlds of others”. There is a scene in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead in which the main character, John Ames, a pastor, walking to his church, comes across a young couple in the street. “The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Human • Tags: amsterdam, art, gilead, harold bloom, human mind, humanism, inner world, marilynne robinson, rijksmuseum, vermeer

A TALK AND AN INTERVIEW NOT SO BLACK & WHITE

March 12, 2023 by Kenan Malik

A talk and an interview in which I discuss my book Not So Black and White. The talk was at the University of Kent’s Centre for the Global Study of Empire, on 7 February, 2023. The interview was with Zoe Williams on a Guardian Live broadcast 31 January, 2023.

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik, Not so Black and White • Tags: centre for the global study of empire, guardian live, kenan malik's books, talks, university of kent, zoe williams

A CATHEDRAL, A MOSQUE, HISTORIES AND MYTHS

March 9, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the controversies surrounding Córdoba’s mosque-cathedral and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, was my Observer column this week. It was published 4 March 2023, under the headline “Mezquita and Hagia Sophia: two sacred symbols and the culture wars that belie their complex history”. Córdoba’s mosque-cathedral is one of the most glorious buildings in Europe. I was last there 30 years ago, but the memory is still vividly etched in my mind. I remember walking through the Courtyard of the Orange Trees. Then, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, History, International • Tags: al-andalus, byzantine, christianity, constantinople, cordoba, cordoba mezquita, cordoba mosque cathedral, erdogan, hagia sophia, islam, istanbul, spain, turkey

THERE IS NO RELIGIOUS TEST

March 2, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate over Kate Forbes’ socially conservative views and the SNP leadership race, was my Observer column this week. It was published 26 February 2023, under the headline “Politicians have the right to strong religious views. But not to be shielded from scrutiny”. “Secularism now means a ban on religious people in public life.” “We seem to have ushered in a kind of reverse religious test.” “Does her faith and her refusal to renounce any elements of it effectively debar […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Politics • Tags: christianity, free church of scotland, gender recognition act, hate crimes, humza yousaf, kate forbes, scottish national party, secularism, snp, social conservatism, unwoke, woke

REWRITING COLONIALISM

February 26, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This review of Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning was published in the Observer, 19 February 2023. In 1857, in the wake of the “Indian Mutiny”, a British officer, Lt George Cracklow, described in a letter home what happened to captured rebels. “The prisoners were marched up to the guns… and lashed to the muzzles,” he wrote. “The guns exploded… I could hardly see for the smoke for about 2 seconds when down came something with a thud about 5 yards […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: british empire, colonialism, indian mutiny, john stuart mill, nigel biggar, racism, slavery

WHEN CRITICISM BECOMES SEDITION

February 23, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the new climate of censorship in India, was my Observer column this week. It was published 19 February 2023, under the headline “India enjoyed a free and vibrant media. Narendra Modi’s brazen attacks are a catastrophe”. In January, the BBC broadcast a two-part series, India: The Modi Question, which looked forensically at the role of Narendra Modi in fomenting the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots of 2002 in which at least 1,000 people were killed. Now the prime minister of India, Modi […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: bbc, bjp, censorship, free press, free speech, gujarat riots, india, narendra modi, rss

PREVENTING LIBERTY NOT RADICALISATION

February 16, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Britain’s “Prevent” policy, was my Observer column this week. It was published 12 February 2023, under the headline “Prevent doesn’t stop radicalisation, and the Shawcross plan will just make it worse”. Which poses the greater threat: Islamist or far-right terror? That has become the focus of much of the debate around William Shawcross’s Review of Britain’s Prevent anti-terror strategy published last week. Most people with knowledge of the issue accept that while far-right terror is the fastest growing threat, Islamist terrorism remains the […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: academic freedom, censorship, counter-terror policing, deradicalisation, muslims, prevent, racism, radicalisation, shawcross review, surveillance, william showcross

SIX BOOKS

February 12, 2023 by Kenan Malik

The Week asked for my six favourite books. These are my picks. Though, to be honest, even if I had a choice of 60 books, it would have been difficult to know which ones would make the cut. The Black Jacobins by CLR James (1938) A seamless synthesis of novelistic narrative, factual reconstruction and polemical argument, The Black Jacobins helped transform both the writing of history and history itself. It was a “history from below” long before the phrase was […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: books, clr james, dostoevsky, ep thompson, the black jacobins, toni morrison, val wilmer, victor serge

HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS THAT FRAME OUR LIVES

February 9, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the hidden assumptions that underlie policy making and public perceptions, was my Observer column this week. It was published 5 February 2023, under the headline “Debt, bad; work, good: ‘pub bore’ beliefs that seal a miserable fate for the poorest”. “I can’t live on the never-never and neither can this country… Austerity was a necessary evil… The unemployed will only work if they are forced to.” No, not the sound of the pub bore, but some of the often unstated assumptions […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: andrew dilnot, austerity, bbc, benefits, conditionality, debt, ifs, institute for fiscal studies, michael blastland

MORALISING POVERTY AND MISTRANSLATING EQUALITY

February 2, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the problems in the ways we think of poverty and indequality, was my Observer column this week. It was published 29 January 2023, under the headline “Focusing on diversity means we miss the big picture. It’s class that shapes our lives”. “There is no primary poverty left in this country,” Margaret Thatcher told the Catholic Herald in 1978, five months before she became prime minister. “There may be poverty because people don’t know how to budget, don’t know how to spend their […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: adolph reed, diversity, individualism, inequality, margaret thatcher, moralising poverty, poverty, walter benn michaels

HOW HANIF KUREISHI GAVE ME A VOICE

January 26, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the personal significance of Hanif Kureishi, was my Observer column this week. It was published 22 January 2023, under the headline “Hanif Kureishi helped liberate British Asians from their imposed identities”. We had been messaging each other on Boxing Day, trying to fix a date for a drink. Then all went silent. I assumed that Hanif Kureishi was too busy enjoying himself in Rome. Only later did I discover that he had had a fall that had left him almost paralysed […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: fatwa, hanif kureishi, islamism, muslims, my beautiful laundrette, racism, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

RACISM REBRANDED

January 19, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This is an extract from my book Not So Black and White, prefaced by an introduction to the themes of the book. It was published in the Observer’s New Review on 8 January 2023. (I have not put in the links; you can find the references in the book.) “The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.” So wrote Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born revolutionary and intellectual, in his 1952 masterpiece, Black Skin, White Masks. He was making an argument about […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik, Not so Black and White, Race & Immigration • Tags: alain de benoist, alt-right, bat ye'or, douglas murray, ethnopluralism, far right, generation identity, great replacement theory, grece, identity politics, immigration, lionel shriver, muslims, nouvelle droite, racism, white decline, white identity

USING DIVERSITY TO EVISCERATE DIVERSITY

January 12, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on a controversy over an image depicting Muhammad,, was my Observer column this week. It was published 8 January 2023, under the headline “An art treasure long cherished by Muslims is deemed offensive. But to whom?” It is a beautiful painting found in a 14th-century Persian manuscript, the “Compendium of Chronicles”, a history of Islam. It shows the Prophet Muhammad receiving his first Quranic revelations from the angel Gabriel. Christine Gruber, professor of Islamic art at the University of Michigan, describes it […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: academic freedom, blasphemy, censorship, depicting muhammad, diversity, hamline university, islam, muhammad, religious freedom