Author Archives: Kenan Malik

RADICAL ISLAM AND THE RAGE AGAINST MODERNITY

January 28, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article on ‘Radical Islam, Nihilist Rage’ published last month in the New York Times. Faced with a horror such as the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and staff by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as ‘inhuman’ or ‘medieval’. What made the massacre particularly chilling, though, is that it was neither. The killings were all too human and of our time. The Peshawar massacre may have been particularly abhorrent, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, boko haram, frantz fanon, islam, islamic state, islamism, left, pakistan, religion, taliban

HOW A BUNCH OF VICIOUS CHANCERS BECAME MEN OF WISDOM

January 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

‘The world has lost a revered leader’, claimed US Secretary of John Kerry on the death last week of Saudi King Abdullah, a ‘man of wisdom and vision’, in Kerry’s words. David Cameron praised his ‘commitment to peace’ and ordered flags to be flown at half mast on government buildings. Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, even hailed him as a proto-feminist, a ‘strong advocate of women’. In reality, the man that virtually every Western leader has […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, International • Tags: arab world, imperialism, islam, islamism, saudi arabia, wahhabism, western policy

CIVILIZED FRANCE AND SAVAGE FRANCE

January 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I wrote in a previous post about the process by which French citizens of North African origin were pushed out to the banlieues, redefined as ‘Muslims’ and cast as the ‘Other’, as not really part of the French nation. What this process revealed, I suggested, were then anxieties of the French elite about the values and identity of the nation. I am publishing here three passages from writers of very different perspectives who speak to those anxieties, from both sides of […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: andrew hussey, assimilationism, banlieues, charlie hebdo, france, islam, islamism, karim miske, michel houellebecq, muslims, national identity, racism, sartre

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 3)

January 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the US South to the northern cities. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is marking that anniversary by bringing together in an exhibition all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s epic portrayal of the exodus. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters and his Great Migration series is perhaps his most famous work, a work as much […]

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

ON FREE SPEECH AND DOUBLE STANDARDS

January 16, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is about Charlie Hebdo, Dieudonné and double standards in free speech. Here are the opening paragraphs. Read the full article in the INYT. On Tuesday, the French police arrested the controversial French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala. He had written on Facebook ‘I feel like Charlie Coulibaly’ — a mash-up of Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four Jewish hostages in a kosher supermarket in Paris, in an attack linked […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: charlie hebdo, dieudonne, france, free speech, islam, liberal hypocrisy

ASSIMILATIONISM VS MULTICULTURALISM

January 12, 2015 by Kenan Malik

One of the key debates in European social policy has been that between multiculturalism and assimilationism. French ‘assimilationist’ policies are generally seen as the polar opposite of British-style multiculturalism. French politicians pride themselves in having rejected the divisive consequences of multiculturalism. Unlike in the rest of Europe, they insist, in France every individual is treated as a citizen, not as a member of a particular racial or cultural group. The question of French social policy, and of social divisions, has […]

Categories: International, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: assimilationism, bernard-henri levy, britain, burqa bans, charlie hebdo, enlightenment, france, islam, jihadism, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, universalism

JE SUIS CHARLIE? IT’S A BIT LATE

January 8, 2015 by Kenan Malik

‘Je suis Charlie’. It’s a phrase in every newspaper, in every Twitter feed, on demonstrations in cities across Europe. The expressions of solidarity with those slain in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices are impressive. They are also too late. Had journalists and artists and political activists taken a more robust view on free speech over the past 20 years then we may never have come to this. Instead, they have helped create a new culture of self-censorship. Partly, it […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: charlie hebdo, france, free speech, islam, islamism

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RADICAL ISLAM, NIHILIST RAGE

January 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the New York Times is on radical Islam and about what acts such as the massacre of school children in Peshawar by the Taliban tell us about Islam and about radicalism. Here are the opening paragraphs; you can read the full version in the NYT. Faced with a horror like the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and school staff members by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as ‘inhuman’ or ‘medieval’. What made […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, islam, islamism, religion, taliban, western policy

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 2)

January 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the US South to the northern cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and New York. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is marking that anniversary with an exhibition that brings together all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s epic portrayal of the exodus. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters and his Great Migration series is perhaps his most […]

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

A YEAR OF PANDAEMONIUM

December 31, 2014 by Kenan Malik

It has been a frantic, hectic, non-stop year, and that’s been reflected in Pandaemonium. My thanks to everyone who has read, commented and supported this blog. Here are some of the highlights of a year of Pandaemonium in 2014. And best wishes to all for 2015. The Quest for a Moral Compass My book, The Quest for a Moral Compass, was published in May, and the reviews have largely been favourable; I was particularly taken by those from Jonathan […]

Categories: Pandaemonium • Tags: 2014, pandaemonium

DYLAN COVERED

December 28, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Bob Dylan’s forthcoming album, Shadows in the Night, will consist of cover versions of Sinatra songs. Which should be… interesting. But what of cover versions of Dylan’s own songs? Dylan has, of course, an incomparable back catalogue, and few modern songsmiths have been so covered by others. Dylan himself remains the best interpreter of his work: most cover versions are either too reverential or fail to capture the essence of the original. There have, however, been some outstanding reworkings of […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: barb jungr, blues, bob dylan, jimi hendrix, music, nina simone, the band, van morrison

RIGHT AND WRONG IN THE MODERN WORLD

December 25, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Better than a sermon on Xmas day… a discussion of the history of morality, and of the state of contemporary moral thinking, with Philip Petit and Natasha Circa on Australia’s ABC Radio. http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2014/12/sea_20141220.mp3 For more discussions on morality see my talks on ‘Where do values come from’ at London’s RSA and ‘Without a moral safety net’ at the Glasgow Aye Write Festival. Or just get my book, The Quest for a Moral Compass. The image is a […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: greek philosophy, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, modernity, morality, religion

ISLINGTON WOMAN AND WHITE VAN MAN

December 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on British politics and public attitudes to immigration published last month in the International New York Times under the headline ‘A Collision with “White Van Man”‘. Rarely can such an unremarkable photo have such heavy political repercussions. Last Thursday, a senior Labour Party member of Parliament, Emily Thornberry, tweeted a photo of a terraced house in Rochester, Kent. It showed three flags of England draped across the facade and a white van […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, immigration, labour party, racism, ukip, working class

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION

December 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Beginning in 1915, some six million black African Americans from the South joined an exodus to the northern cities – Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and many others. This was the Great Migration. It was the result both of the conditions in which African Americans found themselves in the South and the labour needs of Northern employers. After post-Civil War Reconstruction, white supremacy had largely been restored across the South, enforced though the Jim Crow laws. It was a segregated […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, black culture, black identity, harlem renaissance, jacob lawrence, modernism, robert hughes, the great migration, usa

FEAR AND FREE SPEECH

December 19, 2014 by Kenan Malik

When Sony announced that it was withdrawing its film The Interview after threats from hackers, my first thought was ‘Thank God Sony was not the publisher of The Satanic Verses.’. Not because there is any direct analogy between the Salman Rushdie affair and l’affair Sony. Still less because I think The Interview is an important film, or in any sense comparable to Rushdie’s novel – from what I can gather I would rather spend two hours at a dentist than […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: censorship, free speech, penguin, peter mayer, rushdie affair, sony, the interview, the satanic verses, wendy doniger