Author Archives: Kenan Malik

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #27

October 12, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . European priorities, Libya realities Daniel Howden, Refugees Deeply Quarterly, October 2017 The horrific abuses suffered inside Libya’s migrant prisons range from rape and torture to forced labor. The IOM and UNHCR have limited access to the detention centers and must apply in writing before visiting – they cannot conduct spot inspections. The […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

LIGHT AND GRACE IN ISTANBUL

October 8, 2017 by Kenan Malik

‘I saw the monuments, the great ancient remains. From every ruin I learned, from every building I absorbed something.’ So wrote Mimar Sinan, perhaps the greatest architect of the premodern Islamic world, a figure whose work has been compared to that of the Renaissance architects and artists Brunelleschi and Michaelangelo, with whom he was a sixteenth century contemporary. Sinan was talking of the great ancient buildings of Baghdad and Damascus, of Persia and north Africa, one of his many sources […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, International, Photos • Tags: architecture, islamic architecture, istanbul, mimar sinan, ottoman empire, photography, suleymaniye mosque

POPULISM AND IMMIGRATION

October 5, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk given to the European School of Politics in Istanbul, 30 September 2017. It pulls together many of the themes of which I have written in recent years. The obvious point of departure for a talk on populism and immigration is last week’s German elections. The election took place under the shadow of the European Union’s migration crisis and the debate about Angela Merkel’s refugee policies. Merkel was retuned to power for a fourth […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: afd, brexit, class identity, european union, francis fukuyama, germany, identity politics, immigration, left, migration crisis, populism, refugees, social democracy, solidarity, spain, working class

SILENCE, ROMANTICISM AND THE DEBATE ON INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

October 2, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the New York Times on the debate about Indigenous rights in Australia. (I cannot publish my NYT articles on Pandaemonium until the month after they are published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline ‘The New Voice for Indigenous Australia’. Nothing prepares you for your first sight of Uluru. Amid the vastness of Australia’s arid ‘red centre’, there is something wondrous about this monumental slab […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: australia, culture, indigenous rights, noel pearson, racism, recognition, romanticism, uluru, uluru statement

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #26

September 28, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Truth? It’s not just about the facts Julian Baginni, Times Literary Supplement, 21 September 2017 Truth is rarely, if ever, a simple matter of getting the facts straight. History, for example, certainly demands factual accuracy but that in itself is not enough. There is also the question of which facts are made […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE MORAL TIGHTROPE

September 24, 2017 by Kenan Malik

. . This is a recording of a discussion at the Bendigo Writers Festival between Paul Barclay and myself on morality and history. It was broadcast on ABC’s Big Ideas programme on Thursday 21 September. . Buy the book! Buy the book from Amazon, the Book Depository or from most bookshops. An absolute tour de force. I can imagine it replacing Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy on many a bookshelf – certainly mine’ Tom Holland There is little available […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: history of moral thought, morality, talks

APPROPRIATING CONFUSION

September 20, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The radical magazine Current Affairs recently published an essay by Briahna Joy Gray critical of critics of the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’. Gray was particularly disparaging of an essay that I had published in the New York Times. I enjoy Current Affairs, and it often carries insightful articles. I thought, however, that Gray’s piece, while raising some important points, was confused and tendentious in its criticisms. Current Affairs refused me a reply; I did not need a right of reply, the editor Nathan Robinson […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: adolph reed, chris ofili, chuck berry, cultural appropriation, dana schutz, elvis presley, inequality, mf husain, racism

ON MARK LILLA’S CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY POLITICS

September 17, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer on 17 September 2017, under the headline ‘In a society too short of common goals, identity politics are an imperfect answer’. Last November, Columbia University historian Mark Lilla published a comment piece in the New York Times, entitled The End of Identity Liberalism. Numbed by Trump’s election victory, Lilla placed the blame largely at the door of ‘identity politics’, which, he argued, had atomised American politics, undermined civic culture and destroyed the Democrats’ […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Politics • Tags: freedom struggles, identity politics, left, liberalism, mark lilla, racism, universalism

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #25

September 14, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. A tragedy of manners Angela Nagle, The Baffler, September 2017 Comments on the bad manners of Donald Trump have come from a wide array of sources, all along the political spectrum. British Burkean conservative Peter Hitchens called him ‘an oaf and a yahoo who has gravely damaged the standards of public life.’ The […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

WHAT VOICE FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA?

September 11, 2017 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on the debate about Indigenous rights in Australia. It was published under the headline ‘The New Voice for Indigenous Australia‘: The debate about Indigenous peoples seems – at least to me, an outsider – to take place on only two registers: on one hand, silence; on the other, a romanticization of indigenous life. It may seem odd to speak of silence in a nation where the issue of […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: australia, colonialism, indigenous australians, indigenous culture, noel pearson, racism, romanticism, uluru, uluru statement

BACK TO OZ

September 7, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Yes, I know, I’ve only just returned from Australia. But I am back in October to talk at the Festival of Questions at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne and at Griffith University’s Integrity 20 conference in Brisbane. The details: . The Festival of Questions Wheeler Centre 176 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne 15 October 14.30 What is Right? What is Left? The times, they are … confusing. Trump and Brexit have shaken up traditional definitions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics. […]

Categories: Kenan Malik • Tags: australia, talks

WORDS STILL FAIL US WHEN WE TALK ABOUT MUSLIMS

September 3, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 3 September 2017, under the headline ‘Fostering row exposes how words fail us when we talk about Muslims in Britain’. Court cases involving children being taken into care are inevitably messy. There are deep emotions involved and conflicting viewpoints. Parents are often angry, children confused and fearful. Those outside the process can find it difficult to discern the facts, as much of the decision-making takes place behind closed doors. Given all this, it […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Politics • Tags: adoption, andrew norfolk, british politics, culture, fostering, identity politics, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, rotherham abuse scandal, tower hamlets

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #24

August 31, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . The fake news fallacy Adrian Chen, New Yorker, 4 September 2017 Not so very long ago, it was thought that the tension between commercial pressure and the public interest would be one of the many things made obsolete by the Internet. In the mid-aughts, during the height of the Web 2.0 boom, […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

TILI WIRU TJUTA NYAKUTJAKU

August 28, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Tili Wiru Tjuta Nyakutjaku. ‘Looking at many beautiful lights.’ That’s the Pitjantjatjara name for Bruce Munro’s ‘Field of Light’ installation at Uluru in Australia. (Pitjantjatjara is one the two main languages of the Anangu, the local Indigenous group.) ‘Field of Light’ is an art installation that Munro has created in many sites across the world: London’s V&A Museum, the Eden Project, Cornwall, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Cheekwood Museum, Nashville, Mexico City. But in bringing it to Uluru, […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Photos • Tags: bruce munro, field of light, photography

ULURU AND KATA TJUTA AT FIRST LIGHT AND LAST

August 24, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Nothing quite prepares you for your first sight of Uluru. Amid the vastness of the arid landscape of Australia’s red centre, fringed by ill-shapen hills and mountain ranges, there is something wondrous and almost magical about this monumental slab of sandstone, most of which actually lies beneath the ground. The monolith was created more than 500 million years ago, and is a remnant of a vast mountain range formed during the creation of the Australian continent. Much of the surrounding […]

Categories: International, Photos • Tags: australia, indigenous culture, kata tjuta, photography, uluru