Author Archives: Kenan Malik

A YEAR OF PANDAEMONIUM

January 1, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Happy New Year! 2015 was a great year for Pandaemonium. It received more than 500,000 visitors – the first time it’s broken the half-million mark. But it was such a frantic, hectic, non-stop year that many of the new projects that I had hoped to launch, including ebooks and podcasts, have still to get off the ground. Hopefully, that will happen sometime this year. In 2015 I joined Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that allows supporters to help fund the work […]

Categories: Pandaemonium • Tags: pandaemonium

BEST BOOKS OF 2015

December 29, 2015 by Kenan Malik

A (relatively random) rundown of my favourite books from 2015. (To buy book, click on a cover.) . 1 Primo Levi Complete Works (Penguin Classics) I know, I know, this is neither a single book nor a new work. But, both as a witness and as an imaginative writer, Primo Levi was one of the most acute observers of the human condition. This beautifully produced edition of his complete works includes many essays not previously translated into English. It is a […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: bengt jangfeldt, camus, diego rivera, eka kurniawan, jason burke, jon ronson, kamel daoud, luc sante, lucia berlin, mick hume, primo levi, vladimir mayakovsky

TALKING GOD AND GODLESSNESS

December 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Not a sermon for Christmas Day, but a conversation I had with sociologist and broadcaster Laurie Taylor on God and godlessness. It was one in a ‘daisy chain’ of discussions on belief organized by 5×15 at the Wellcome Collection in London in December 2012. The daisy chain featured, as well as Laurie Taylor and myself, Laurie’s son Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, Nick Spencer, director of research at the religious think tank Theos, and Linda Woodhead, Professor of the […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, god, laurie taylor, secularism

TRUMP, NAMAZIE, ISLAM, FREE SPEECH AND THE LEFT

December 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times, which looks at the controversies surrounding Donald Trump and Maryam Namazie and what they tell us about free speech, Islam and the left. For the full article see the INYT. In the strange world of contemporary radicalism, however, many look upon Ms Namazie almost as they regard Mr Trump: as an ‘Islamophobe’. Student groups at several universities, including the University of Warwick and Trinity College Dublin, have attempted […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: donald trump, free speech, left, maryam namazie, safe space

RADICALIZATION AND EUROPEAN SOCIAL POLICY

December 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is an essay I have written for Foreign Affairs. It draws upon, and interweaves, the themes of my lecture at the University of Michigan on ‘The Making of European Jihadis’, which provides an extended critique of the radicalisation thesis, and my previous essay for Foreign Affairs on ‘The Failure of Multiculturalism’, which explored at length the problems of both multicultural and assimilationist social policies. That essay is now in the 2015 anthology of the best articles in Foreign Affairs. This […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, International, Philosophy & Ethics, War on terror • Tags: belgium, france, french politics, identity politics, jihadism, left, molenbeek, multiculturalism, radicalization

LIGHT INFUSION

December 13, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I publish the occasional photography post on Pandaemonium, but my main photography site is Light Infusion. You can see more of my photographs there, and in a larger format. You can order prints from Light Infusion, too (could be handy with Christmas coming up…). As an introduction, here is a slideshow of a few of my favourite shots.

Categories: Photos • Tags: photography

OLIVIER ROY ON EUROPEAN JIHADIS

December 10, 2015 by Kenan Malik

There are few academics who possess a more nuanced and cogent understanding of contemporary Islamism, jihadism and radicalization than the French sociologist Olivier Roy. Here are extracts from a lecture he gave last month at a conference organised by the Bundeskriminalamt (German federal police) on ‘International terrorism: How can prevention and repression keep pace?’ Roy’s lecture – which can be downloaded in full, together with all the other presentations, from the conference website – was entitled ‘What is the driving […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: europe, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, olivier roy

KURDISH LESSONS FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST IS

December 6, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for Al Jazeera English is about the British decision to extend airstrikes into Syria. It was published under the headline ‘Dropping more bombs on ISIL will not save Syria’. Last week, the British Parliament voted to extend airstrikes against so-called Islamic State into Syria. The debate over whether British bombers should operate in Syria has been ferocious. One side condemns their opponents as ‘warmongers’ with blood on their hands; the other side smears critics of airstrikes as […]

Categories: Britain, International, War on terror • Tags: british politics, islamic state, kurds, syria, terrorism, war on terror, western policy, freedom struggles

AFTER THE VOTE, THREE QUESTIONS

December 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Parliament voted on Wednesday to extend British airstrikes to targets in Syria. Within hours, British Tornados had taken off on new missions inside Syria. I am writing a longer piece on some of the issues raised that will be published soon. In the meantime, three questions for both sides of the debate (Yes, the questions are largely rhetorical and I hope to address some of these issues over the coming week): . 1 By any rational account, Britain’s decision to extend […]

Categories: Politics, War on terror • Tags: british politics, islamic state, kurds, syria, terrorism, war on terror, western policy

MIGRANTS AND EUROPE, EAST AND WEST

November 29, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my International New York Times article on the attitudes to migrants in Eastern and Western Europe. It was published earlier this month under the headline ‘Is Eastern Europe Really More Racist Than the West?’. (I cannot publish the full version of my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until four week after the original publication.) Soldiers putting up miles of razor wire fencing to keep out refugees. A mother and child stuck in a field of […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, eastern europe, european union, fortress europe, hungary,, immigration, racism, refugees, xenophobia

WHAT DOES SCIENCE TELL US ABOUT RACE?

November 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part last week in a discussion at the Royal Institution in London entitled ‘What does science tell us about race and racism?’. The other participants were geneticist Aoife McLysaght, sociologist Heidi Mirza, and the writer and broadcaster Adam Rutherford, who chaired the event. None of us gave a formal talk as the evening was more a free-flowing conversation. But here are roughly the points I was trying to make about the complex relation between scientific research and the reality […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration, Science & Technology • Tags: genetics, race, racial science

WHY DO JIHADIS SEEM SO EVIL?

November 22, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This article on why jihadis seem willing to commit acts that appear so depraved or evil was published in the Observer under the headline ‘Why do Islamist groups in particular seem so much more sadistic, even evil?’ The day before the Paris carnage, two suicide bombers killed at least 40 people in a Shia district of Beirut. The week after, two suicide bombings of street markets in Nigeria killed 49 people. Faced with such atrocities, we can often do little […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, evil, identity politics, islamism, jihadism, morality, religion, western policy

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY: THREE INTERVIEWS

November 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a collection of three interviews that I have recently given on issues of identity and diversity. The first is a short video interview I gave at the Riksantikvarieämbetet (Swedish Heritage Board) conference on the ‘Struggle for Cultural Identity’, which I addressed last week. The second is an interview on Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion and Ethics Report on diversity and multiculturalism in Europe. The final interview is with the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, which I have loosely translated from […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: cultural diversity, free speech, identity politics, islam, left, multiculturalism, muslims

AFTER PARIS

November 15, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Solidarity and anger. Those were my immediate emotions, watching the carnage unfold on the streets of Paris. Solidarity with the people of Paris, anger at the depraved, nihilistic savagery of the terrorists. Those remain my main emotions, even now. But, beyond solidarity and anger, we need also analysis. So here are two articles, thinking through some of the issues. The first looks at, and challenges, two popular explanations for why the carnage was unleashed – Western foreign policy, on the […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Politics, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, assimilationism, british politics, france, imperialism, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, multiculturalism, syria, terrorism

THE STRUGGLE FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE

November 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of the keynote lecture I gave at the annual conference of the Riksantikvarieämbetet (the Swedish National Heritage Board) in Stockholm this week. The theme of the conference was ‘The Struggle for Cultural Heritage’. ‘The ministry of symbols.’ That’s how Mélanie Joly, the new Minister of Canadian Heritage in Justin Trudeau’s recently elected administration in Ottowa, this week described her portfolio. What kind of symbols? Not the ones promoted by the previous conservative government of Stephen Harper, but, in […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Multiculturalism • Tags: aya sofia, cordoba, cultural diversity, cultural heritage, culture, diversity, enlightenment, hagia sophia, herder, identity politics, multiculturalism, romanticism, unesco, will kymlicka