Author Archives: Kenan Malik

A MONUMENT TO RED VIENNA

April 17, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Vienna has more than its fair share of magnificent, beautiful and historically significant buildings. The Hofburg Palace, the Belvedere, Stephansdom, Schloss Schönbrunn, the Secession Building, Staatstoper, Karlskiirche, Hunderstwasshauss, Maolika Haus. Along Helinganstädter Strasse, at the end of the U4 U-Bahn, stands a building that even its greatest admirers would not describe as magnificent or beautiful. It is, however, historically significant – though of a history that is often forgotten – and architecturally striking. The Karl Marx Hof, built between 1927 […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, International, Photos • Tags: architecture, austria, left, photography, red vienna, vienna

AWAY WITH THE GATEKEEPERS!

April 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for Al Jazeera English on the the controversies over ‘cultural appropriation’ and what they reveal about the degradation of contemporary campaigns for social justice. It was published in AJE under the headline ‘The bane of cultural appropriation’. Another week, another controversy about ‘cultural appropriation’. The latest has been the furore over Justin Bieber’s dreadlocks. The Bieber furore followed similar controversies over Beyoncé’s Bollywood outfit, Kylie Jenner’s cornrows, Canadians practicing yoga, English students wearing sombreros and American students donning […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, herder, identity politics, justin bieber, racism, romanticism

SO, WHAT DO BRITISH MUSLIMS REALLY THINK?

April 12, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This Wednesday, Channel 4 in Britain will broadcast a Trevor Phillips documentary on ‘What British Muslims really think’. On Sunday, the Sunday Times published details of an ICM poll about Muslim attitudes commissioned for the programme and ran an essay by Phillips on Muslim integration. The headlines generated by the poll – ‘Half of British Muslims want gay sex banned says poll’; ‘Most Muslims would not give terror tip-offs’, etc – and Phillip’s argument (‘the integration of Muslims will probably […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain • Tags: british asians, britishness, islam, islamophobia, muslims, religion, trevor phillips

WHY ABORTION SHOULD BE DECRIMINALIZED

April 6, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Last week Donald Trump caused outrage by suggesting that women who had illegal abortions should be punished; so much outrage, in fact, that he was forced to backtrack. This week a Belfast woman was convicted under the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act after she took pills to induce an abortion. Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland (the province is exempted from the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act, which applies to the rest of the UK). Northern Irish women […]

Categories: Britain, Women • Tags: 1967 abortion act, abortion, northern ireland, women's rights

THE FOURTH WAVE OF EUROPEAN JIHADIS

April 3, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Rik Coolsaet, Professor of International Relations at Ghent University and a Senior Associate Fellow at the Egmont-Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, has just published an important and insightful paper on Belgian jihadis. It provides a comprehensive overview of jihadi scene in Belgium and, in doing so, challenges many of the myths about radicalization that I mentioned in my recent New York Times article. It is worth looking at Coolsaet’s argument in detail. Today’s European jihadis comprise, Coolsaet argues, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, War on terror • Tags: europe, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, marc sageman, olivier roy, radicalization, rik coolsaet, terrorism

COUNTER-TERROR POLICY: THE MYTHS AND THE FAILURES

March 30, 2016 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on why ‘radicalization’ is a flawed concept. It was published under the headline ‘The Little We Know About the Jihadists in Our Midst’. The evidence suggests that the concept is flawed and that such anti-jihadist measures are ineffective, even counterproductive. A secret British government memorandum leaked in 2010 dismissed the idea that there was ‘a linear ‘conveyor belt’ moving from grievance, through radicalization, to violence’. A 2010 American […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: counter-terrorism, islam, islamism, jihadism, marc sageman, radicalization, war on terror

OF CORAL ARE THESE WALLS MADE

March 26, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Neduntheevu is one of the remotest parts of Sri Lanka – a small, oval shaped island in the Palk Strait, off the northwest coast. It is still known, even to many locals, by its Dutch name, Delft. (The Dutch came in the seventeenth century, driving out the Portuguese who, a century earlier, had seized large parts of Sri Lanka). Delft is home to wild horses and boabab trees, the former introduced by the Portuguese, the latter by Arab sailors almost […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: photography, sri lanka

AFTER BRUSSELS: ONCE AGAIN THINKING THROUGH TERROR

March 23, 2016 by Kenan Malik

‘Solidarity and anger. Those were my immediate emotions’. So I wrote last November after the Paris attacks: ‘Solidarity with the people of Paris, anger at the depraved, nihilistic savagery of the terrorists.’ My emotions are much the same after the savage attacks in Brussels this week. ‘But, beyond solidarity and anger,’, I observed in November, ‘we need also analysis.’ I have written much over the past few years about why conventional views about radicalization and the making of European jihadis […]

Categories: International, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, identity politics, islam, islamism, jihadism, left, migration crisis, muslims, radicalization, terrorism

THE CASE FOR FREEDOM WHERE IT IS MOST FRAGILE

March 20, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is an article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on what attitudes to identity and free speech among Sri Lankan audiences can teach those in the West. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) The article was originally published under the headline ‘A Sri Lankan Lesson in Free Speech’. I gave a talk last month at the Galle Literary Festival in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. This […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: free speech, freedom struggles, identity politics, offence, sri lanka

TALKING MIGRATION, MUSLIMS AND MORALITY

March 17, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I recently gave an interview to Bread and Roses, the TV magazine hosted by Maryam Namazie and Fariborz Pooya, on Europe’s migration crisis, Muslim immigration, the open borders debate and the question of profiling. (The interview begins about 7 minutes in). There were a few errors in what I said, so before anyone else points them out, let me do so myself: The EU-Libya migration deal was concluded in 2010; the new EU-Turkey deal proposes that all irregular migrants crossing from Turkey […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Kenan Malik, Race & Immigration • Tags: european union, immigration, islam, islamism, migrant crisis, muslims, open borders, populism, profiling, racism

ON DUNGENESS BEACH

March 13, 2016 by Kenan Malik

It is not quite as strange as Orford Ness, that desolate and derelict, haunting and wild, edge of the Suffolk coast, of which I have written, and photographed, before. But Dungeness beach, on the edge of Romney Marsh in Kent, is strange enough. The largest shingle beach in Europe, it’s a bleak landscape flanked by the concrete blocks of a nuclear power station, adorned with two lighthouses, dotted with the rotting hulks of fishing boats and fisherman’s huts, punctuated with […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: dungeness, photography

THE BLINDNESS OF EU MIGRATION POLICY

March 9, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A shorter version of this essay was published in Al Jazeera English under the headline ‘The dark side of the EU-Turkey refugee deal’. How do you solve a crisis? By brushing it far enough away from your gaze so you can pretend that it is no longer there. That, at least, appears to be the European Union’s approach. For more than a year, the migration crisis has torn at the heart of the EU, creating deep tensions between members, and […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: european union, greece, migration, refugees, turkey

WHAT MAKES DONALD TRUMP

March 6, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for Al Jazeera English is about the Donald Trump phenomenon. It was published in Al Jazeera under the headline ‘Politics of Disillusionment and the Rise of Donald Trump’. Last autumn, when I was in the USA, I asked a number of senior Republican Party figures about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidential nomination. All laughed out loud. It simply won’t happen, they told me. The Republican Party machine would take care of him. I doubt […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: donald trump, populism, racism, usa

MULTICULTURALISM: THE FINNISH EDITION

March 3, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My book, Multiculturalism and its Discontents, has just been published in Finland by the Eurooppalaisen filosofian seura (Society for European philosophy). I did a short interview with the Society’s journal Niin & Näin to introduce the themes of the book, which I am republishing here. Q: Multiculturalism and its Discontents is a very concise and to-the-point exposé of multiculturalism. What inspired you to publish a book of this kind? KM: Multiculturalism has become one of the most used and abused political terms […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Multiculturalism, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: immigration, kenan malik's books, morality, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

OF ANGELS AND DEVILS, OF MONSTERS AND MYTHS

February 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A new edition of my book From Fatwa to Jihad will be published next year, for which I am writing an Afterword to bring the story up to date. So, it seemed a good time to repost two videos I made about the current book for Faculti, a website that publishes videos of authors and academics talking about their work. The first film is a reading from the final section of From Fatwa to Jihad, the second an exploration of the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: free speech, islam, islamism, kenan malik's books, rushdie affair, the satanic verses