Author Archives: Kenan Malik

HISTORY, MORALITY AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

April 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition. I am publishing a number of extracts from the book. This extract, from Chapter 19, ‘Confucianism, Communism and the Clash of Civilizations’, sets out many of the themes of the book against the background of the changing balance of power between China and the West. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, clash of civilizations, confucianism, herder, history of moral thought, jiang qing, martin jacques, morality, romanticism, samuel huntington, universalism, west

THE AGE OF ADOLESCENCE

April 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my article on the Jeremy Clarkson debate, published last month in the International New York Times. (I cannot contractually publish the full article on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published on the NYT.) The middle-aged presenter of a British TV show about cars has been suspended by the BBC for allegedly hitting his producer during a ‘fracas’. Big deal, you might think; hardly global news. Except that, for many people, the suspension last week […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: bbc, britain, free speech, jeremy clarkson, racism, top gear

THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT FREE SPEECH

April 14, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This Barney & Clyde cartoon was published in Washington Post in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings. At the heart of the cartoon, suggested Gene Weingarten, one of the creators of the strip, was ‘the epistemological question asked by Magritte in his famous Ceci n’est pas une pipe painting: Is a representation of a pipe actually a pipe? Who is to define truth? The artists? The viewer? Who is in charge of reality?’ Weingarten saw the questions as directed […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, garry trudeau, hate speech, islam, liberties, mazen kerbaj

THE MORAL CAMERA

April 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition, I will be, over the next few weeks, running extracts from the book. This first extract is from Chapter 18, ‘The search for ethical concrete’, and looks at neuroscientist Joshua Greene‘s idea of morality as existing in two modes – automatic and manual. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From The […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: history of moral thought, joshua greene, kantianism, morality, peter singer, trolley problem, utilitarianism

HOW TO DO HISTORY (AND HOW NOT TO)

April 8, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a guest post by the historian and science writer Philip Ball, who draws on the discussion around physicist Steven Weinberg’s new history of science To Explain the World, and his list of best popular science books,to explore what it means to think historically, and why many scientists who attempt to write histories of their subjects fall short. A version of this essay was first published on Philip’s blog Homunculus. My thanks to Philip for allowing me to publish […]

Categories: History, Science & Technology • Tags: history of science, philip ball, popular science, steven weinberg

TO SEE BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES

April 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 5 April 2015, under the headline ‘Diversity and immigration are not the problem. Political courage is…’ Two events this week, some 2000 miles apart, captured the fraught character of the current debate about multicultural Britain. On Wednesday, nine Britons from Rochdale were arrested in Turkey, apparently as they tried to cross the border into Syria. One was the son of a local Labour councilor Shakil Ahmed, who said he was ‘shocked’ to hear […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, diversity, identity politics, immigration, islam, islamism, multiculturalism, muslims, ukip, working class

OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK!

April 2, 2015 by Kenan Malik

. The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback! You can read reviews of the book. And you can buy it from most bookshops, from Amazon or via my Pandaemonium bookstore. The US version of the paperback will be published later this year. . ‘This is intellectual history in the grand manner, in the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, written with the same clarity, accessibility and narrative verve as the master himself…We are all […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ethics, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books

TO IMAGINE, TO HOPE, TO TRANSCEND, TO TRANSFORM

March 31, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I gave a talk at the launch at London’s Institut Français of Libraries without Borders, the charity inspired by Patrick Weil that aims to increase global access to books and libraries. Also speaking were Ian McEwan, Lisa Appignanesi, Barbara Band and Patrick Weil himself. Here is a transcript of my talk. Let me begin with a story not of a library or a book but of a grand piano. The one grand piano in Gaza, that was discovered still intact […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Human, Justice & Liberties • Tags: clr james, free speech, freedom struggles, identity politics, libraries without borders, malala yousafzai, patrick weil, salman rushdie

ON MULTITUDES

March 28, 2015 by Kenan Malik

We are in Bradford, shortly after a fractious general election, and with the country about to go to war in the Middle East. The Conservatives are holding their party conference in the city. Protestors gather in an Occupy-like camp outside the conference hall. Kash, a liberal Muslim, local councillor, and wannabe MP, is preparing to address the Tory conference about the need to build trust between communities. His white partner Natalie secretly converts to Islam, much to Kash’s shock. Natalie’s […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books, Multiculturalism • Tags: british politics, islam, islamism, john hollingworth, multiculturalism, racism, theatre, tricycle tehatre

ON SCIENCE, MORALITY AND BEING HUMAN

March 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part in a discussion at the Cambridge Science Festival last week on ‘The science of morality’. Others taking part were Ray Tallis, Pater Cave and Alasdair Coles. I have here mashed up my introductory and concluding comments. Every year, I give a lecture to theology students on why I am an atheist. It is essentially a primer on why we don’t need God to explain the universe or to ground morality. And in talking of morality, I take […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: atheism, human nature, humanism, morality, religion, sam harris

TOP QUARK!

March 23, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My essay Assimilationism vs Multiculturalism has won the 3 Quarks Daily Politics and Social Science Prize for 2015. My thanks to 3 Quarks Daily (which, if you don’t know already, is a superb web-based magazine/portal) and to Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch, who judged the competition. The other winning essays were Xavier Marquez’s The Saudi Monarchy as a Family Firm and Omar Ali’s Blasphemy, blasphemy laws, Pakistan, Charlie Hebdo… And the full list of the other finalists: Misha Leptic, Notes of a Grand Juror (3 Quarks […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium

THE BEAUTY OF SOUND

March 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I picked up my cello again recently after a couple of years in which I have been too busy to practice. So it seemed a good time to post again some of my cello photos. There are few musical instruments that are as beguiling to the ear. There are also few that are as bewitching to the eye. And, as I have observed before, these photos may be a better tribute to the cello than my playing ever will be.

Categories: Photos • Tags: music, photos

BIGOT OR REBEL?

March 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the furore over Jeremy Clarkson’s suspension from Top Gear, published in the INYT under the headline ‘Top Gear hits rock bottom’. Here are the opening paragraphs. You can read the full article in the INYT. The middle-aged presenter of a British TV show about cars has been suspended by the BBC for allegedly hitting his producer during a ‘fracas’. Big deal, you might think; hardly global news. Except that, for many […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: bbc, britain, free speech, jeremy clarkson, top gear

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PLAYING GOD?

March 16, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my article on mitochondrial transfer, published last month in the International New York Times under the headline ‘The Three-Parent Baby’s First Step’. The British Parliament can be an archaic, backward-looking institution, wedded to tradition, and not known for taking a revolutionary stance. Yet its members have just made a groundbreaking decision, one that no other legislature has so far been willing to contemplate. They approved legislation that makes Britain the first country formally to […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 6)

March 14, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the final part of the series I have been running on Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration paintings. Lawrence was one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, and the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the South to the North that began at the start of the First World War, one of the defining features of American history. I wrote in the first post about the significance both of Lawrence and of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa