Author Archives: Kenan Malik

THE IRRATIONAL FEAR OF RADIATION

July 30, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is an essay by the science writer and broadcaster Geoff Watts who argues that irrational panic about radiation can cause more harm than radiation itself. It was first published in the terrific online science magazine Mosaic. Bad Gastein in the Austrian Alps. It’s 10am on a Wednesday in early March, cold and snowy – but not in the entrance to the main gallery of what was once a gold mine. Togged out in swimming trunks, flip-flops and a bath […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: chernobyl, fukushima, irrationalism, nuclear power, panics

HISTORY AND THE MAKING OF THE INDIVIDUAL

July 27, 2015 by Kenan Malik

In May, I took part in a discussion on ‘Individualism’ organised by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation and the British Academy. The starting point of the discussion was Larry Siedentop’s book Inventing the Individual, which argues that the modern liberal idea of the individual was created in the work of Christian theologians. It is a view about which I am skeptical, as I observed in my review of Siedentop’s book. Larry Siedentop spoke at the event; other speakers included Angelica Gooden, […]

Categories: History, Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: antigone, aristotle, brecht, christianity, enlightenment, equality, greek philosophy, individualism, jonathan israel, larry siedentop, modernity, plato, radical enlightenment, the reformation

IRANIAN BLUES

July 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

No, not a political post, but a musical one. I have only recently started listening to Iranian blues and jazz. There is here a wonderful store of music, both traditional and modern, beautiful and often haunting, related to, but different from, forms of Arab and North African blues and jazz. So, here is a compilation of some of my favourite singers, or at least those I have so far discovered. There must be countless artists that I should know about […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, iran, music

BEYOND THE CLICHES ABOUT RADICALISATION

July 22, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Another week, another major speech about the threat of radical Islam and of jihadism, another set of policies to deal with the problem. On Monday, David Cameron gave his latest high profile speech about what he called ‘the struggle of our generation’.The trouble with most of these speeches is that they are rooted in false perceptions of the problem. And the trouble with most of these initiatives is that their real impact is not so much in combating jihadism as […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, War on terror • Tags: british politics, david cameron, identity politics, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, muslims, radicalisation

PAINTING BY PIGMENT AND LIGHT

July 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I dislike photography that seeks self-consciously to be ‘painterly’; still less paintings that aspire to photorealism. A photographer is not a painter, and a painter is not a photographer, and to pretend otherwise is to diminish that which gives each form its meaning. But sometimes you take a photo that captures the spirit of a particular artist. You discover something in a scene, or evoke something within it, that brings to mind the way that he or she may also […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: albert bierstedt, art, bridget riley, cezanne, katsushika hokusai, klimt, monet, ohara koson, photos, rothko, turner, watanabe seiti

EVIL AND THE ISLAMIC STATE

July 16, 2015 by Kenan Malik

‘The problem of evil’, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1945, ‘will be the fundamental question of postwar intellectual life in Europe.’ The historical and moral significance of contemporary jihadism is miniscule when compared to that of the Holocaust and the Final Solution. And yet jihadism has raised again the question of evil. Not evil in the sense of genocide but as expressed through acts of barbarity so inhuman that they are difficult to comprehend. The barbarism of Islamic State, in particular, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-humanism, anti-imperialism, evil, freedom struggles, hannah arendt, identity politics, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, left, marc sageman, morality

WHY NO OUTRAGE OVER YEMEN?

July 13, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Sophia Dingli is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Hull. In this article she questions why Western commentators, who have been vocal about the Israel’s attack on Gaza and the brutality of IS, have been so silent about the conflict in Yemen. It was first published in The Conversation. Sophia Dingli More than 2,800 people are dead in Yemen – so why aren’t we outraged? In the summer of 2014, our screens were inundated with videos of […]

Categories: International • Tags: saudi arabia, war on terror, western policy, yemen

BRITAIN’S DANGEROUS TRIBALISM

July 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

From ‘Britain’s Dangerous New Tribalism’, my latest column for the International New York Times: This exodus to Syria has led non-Muslims to point an accusing finger at Muslim communities. Last month, the prime minister, David Cameron, condemned those who, though not violent, ‘buy into’ the prejudices of Islamism and ‘quietly condone’ the actions of the Islamic State. A poll published last week found that 56 percent of Britons thought that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy, a figure […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, british politics, identity politics, islam, islamism, multiculturalism, war on terror

AS WE APPROACH THE ENDGAME

July 9, 2015 by Kenan Malik

We are approaching the endgame of the protracted negotiations between Greece and the EU over its debt. Last Sunday’s referendum, in which the Greek people decisively rejected the previous EU austerity package, was supposed to have strengthened the Greek government’s hand in the negotiations. The new Greek proposals submitted on Thursday accept, however, an even greater degree of austerity than that rejected by the Greek people. Against this background, it is worth reiterating some basic points about Greece, the EU […]

Categories: Economy, International • Tags: austerity policies, euro crisis, european union, greece, left

THE IMPORTANCE OF FEELING UNCOMFORTABLE

June 30, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Tiffany Antone is a playwright, director, educator and producer. She is co-founder of The@trics and runs Little Black Dress INK, a female playwright producing organization. She writes here about the temptations and dangers of using trigger warnings, and how such warnings can limit both artistic freedom and an audience’s artistic appreciation. It was published first in Howlround. Tiffany Antone Trigger warnings and artistic freedom In 2014, Little Black Dress INK’s ONSTAGE festival lineup included a powerful little ‘rape comedy’ by playwright […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: censorship, offence, rape, satire, theatre, trigger warnings

WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE

June 27, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The story of the struggle for black rights in America is intimately linked to the story of popular music. And from Ferguson to Charleston, every recent conflict, confrontation and tragedy has brought to mind a particular song. So, here is a collection of 12 songs that have acted as the soundtrack to the black struggle in America over the past century. It is largely chronological and reflects the shifts both in the struggle and in the music (as well as […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, america, anti-racism, black struggle, blues, freedom struggles, hiphop, jacob lawrence, jazz, music, r'n'b, racism, soul

BATTLES OVER ANCIENT BONES AND MODERN IDENTITIES

June 24, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Last week a paper in Nature by Rasmussen et al threw new light on the question of the genetic origins of Kennewick Man, a 8,500 year old skeleton whose bones were discovered in July 1996 by two teenagers in the Columbia River, near Kennewick, Washington State, in north-west USA. It was a rare find, nearly a complete skeleton, and one of the oldest human discovered in North America. The bones became the focus of an intense, fractious battle, both scientific and […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, cultural ownership, cultural repariation, david hurst thomas, human remains, identity politics, indigenous culture, kennewick man, nagpra, native americans, racial science, unesco, vine deloria

BACK TO BRADFORD FOR AN OLD DEBATE

June 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

A Dutch TV company, VPRO, is making a documentary about the Rushdie affair, partly using my book From Fatwa to Jihad as a template. And as part of the documentary it wanted a ‘renunion’ between myself and Sher Azam, the president of the Bradford Council of Mosques in the 1980s and the man who organized the torching of The Satanic Verses at the end of the famous demonstration in January 1989. I was not at the demonstration, but shortly afterwards went […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Free Speech • Tags: bradford, equality, free speech, gay marriage, islam, liberalism, liberties, religious freedom, rushdie affair, sher azam, the satanic verses

FIFA AND THE CORRUPTION OF RHETORIC

June 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest article for the New York Times is about the overblown rhetoric on both sides of the debate about the Fifa scandal. It was published under the headline ‘The Corrupt Rhetoric of the FIFA Scandal’: ‘We have fought colonialism and defeated it and we still fight imperialism and we will fight it whenever it manifests itself.” So claimed South Africa’s sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, recently. He was talking not of war or invasion but about the F.B.I.’s investigation into […]

Categories: International, Politics, Sport • Tags: fifa, football, usa

DISAFFECTION IN A FRAGMENTED WORLD

June 14, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 14 June 2015, under the headline ‘As old orders crumble, progressive alternatives struggle to emerge’. The ambitions of the Islamists have been checked, those of the left revived. That is how most commentators viewed the results of last week’s Turkish general election. The ruling AKP, whose roots lie in the Islamist tradition, lost its parliamentary majority, in part because of the rise of HDP, a leftwing, secular Kurdish party. However, to view developments in […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: arab spring, bjp, egypt, europe, identity politics, india, indian national congress, islamism, kemalism, sectarianism, turkey