Author Archives: Kenan Malik

ALMOST HERE…

April 12, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Yes, it’s almost here! My new book, The Quest for a Moral Compass will be published by Atlantic on 1 May. Here, as an introduction, is the opening section of the book. The Quest for a Moral Compass ‘Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilleus, son of Peleus, the accursed anger which brought uncounted anguish on the Achaians and hurled down to Hades many mighty souls of heroes, making their bodies the prey to dogs and the birds’ feasting; and […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ethics, fate, free will, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, homer, human agency, kenan malik's books

CONFORMING, NOT TRANSFORMING

April 9, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Last week, Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the technology company that, among other things, is responsible for the Firefox browser, resigned after it was revealed that in 2008 he had given a $1000 donation to Proposition 8, the Californian campaign against gay marriage. Mozilla decided that his views were incompatible with its core values of ‘diversity and inclusiveness’. This week Brandeis University in America withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the campaigner against female […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: ayaan hirsi ali, free speech, gay marriage, homophobia, islam, islamism, islamophobia, judith butler, maajid nawaz, racism, tariq ramadan, wendy doniger

REFLECTIONS, REFLECTIONS

April 6, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Reflections are to photography almost as metaphors are to writing. They help reframe the subject, and act, literally and figuratively, as distorting mirrors, allowing one to play with form and colour. So, some reflections on water, glass and stone. For more, check out my new photography website/project Light Infusion.

Categories: Photos

NO SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT FREE SPEECH

April 3, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Fredrik deBoer, who teaches at Purdue University in Indiana, recently wrote on his blog a passionate polemic about the way that what he calls the ‘social justice left’ has abandoned the struggle for free speech, and indeed take up the struggle for censorship. Since much of his argument resonates with many of the themes I have pursued on Pandaemonium, I thought it would be useful to repost it here. There was an interesting discussion and a follow-up post, too, both worth reading. […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: free speech, left

MELANIE PHILLIPS RESPONDS

March 31, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Last week I wrote a critique of Melanie Phillips’ column in which she claimed the progressive ground for critics of mass immigration. Here is her response to my critique. My thanks to Melanie for taking the time and trouble to write this. I have written a response which I originally posted as a comment but have now attached to the end of this post. ‘A compendium of straw men, misunderstandings and questionable assertions’ I’m afraid Kenan’s criticism of my Times […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, fortress europe, immigration, liberalism, melanie phillips, muslims, racism

BLUE NOTES ON A DESERT ISLAND

March 29, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of Blue Note Records, the most iconic and influential of jazz labels, not just for its incomparable music but also for its group-breaking album covers. To mark that anniversary, Blue Note is re-releasing on vinyl 100 of its greatest albums (it was going to be 75 to coincide with the anniversary, but they found it impossible to squeeze their favourites down that […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: jazz, music

IF ONLY SHE HAD READ MY ESSAY FIRST…

March 27, 2014 by Kenan Malik

On Monday my essay ‘In Defence of Diversity’ – which exposes the hollowness of contemporary anti-immigration rhetoric, and places it in historical context – won the 3 Quarks Daily 2014 essay prize. And on Monday, the Times’ new columnist Melanie Phillips – my old colleague from the days when I was a panelist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze – published a polemic trying to claim the progressive ground for critics of mass immigration. Her arguments are familiar – […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-semitism, british politics, david goodhart, fortress europe, immigration, liberalism, melanie phillips, muslims, racism, working class

TOP QUARK

March 25, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My essay, In Defence of Diversity, has won the 3 Quarks Daily 2014 Politics and Social Science Prize. My thanks to 3 Quarks Daily (which, if you don’t know already, is a superb web-based magazine/portal) and to Mark Blyth who judged the competition. The other winning essays were Filipe Gracio’s Democratic Austerity: Semi-sovereign states, semi-sovereign peoples and Philip Cohen’s State of Utah falsely claims same-sex marriage ban makes married, man-woman parenting more likely. And here is the full list of the other […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium

MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?

March 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Last week Saudi Arabia banned the works of poet Mahmoud Darwish from the Riyadh Book Fair for being ‘blasphemous’. Darwish, who died in 2008, was perhaps the most important Arab poet of his generation. He was born in 1942 in the village of al-Birwa to the north of what is now Israel. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, it was occupied by Israeli forces, its inhabitants forced to flee (many, like Darwish’s family, to nearby Lebanon), and the village itself destroyed the […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: mahmoud darwish, palestine, poetry

CREATING THE BEAST OF BROADWATER FARM

March 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In the Old Bailey in London there is currently a trial that carries with it the aftershocks of the social fractures, institutional injustices and corrupt policing of the 1980s. Nicholas Jacobs is in the dock accused of murdering policeman PC Keith Blakelock, killed during the Broadwater Farm riot of October 1985. Much has been written during Jacobs’ trial about the agony of the Blackelock family in having to wait three decades for possible justice. Almost entirely ignored has been the […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, broadwater farm, police racism, racism, riots, winston silcott

BRITAIN’S BOBBIES IN THE DOCK

March 18, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times, on the crisis surrounding Britain’s police. Earlier this month, Theresa May, Britain’s home secretary, announced a public inquiry into reports that the Metropolitan Police had spied on a black family, even as the force was supposed to be investigating the racist killing of the family’s eldest son. Mrs. May called the revelations ‘profoundly shocking’ and said that ‘policing stands damaged today’. The story goes back to 1993, when Stephen Lawrence, a […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: britain, british politics, police, stephen lawrence

THE ROYAL MINT

March 15, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my New York Times essay on the funding of the British royal family that, in some quarters at least, caused considerable outrage. The British queen is down to her last pennies. Well, actually, her last millions of pennies. Last month, the Public Accounts Committee — Parliament’s watchdog on public spending — published a damning survey of the state of the royal finances. The queen had spent down her ‘reserve fund’, essentially a savings account built up […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: austerity, britain, democracy, monarchy

THE MANY SHADES OF UKRAINE

March 12, 2014 by Kenan Malik

When is an invasion not an invasion? When is sovereignty not sovereignty? When is an unelected regime more legitimate than an elected government? The answer, it seems, is when we are discussing Ukraine. The crisis in Ukraine has swiftly turned into a global stand-off. It has also become the focus for a war of words about the meaning of freedom, democracy, legitimacy and sovereignty. For many in the West, Russia’s operations in Crimea bear comparison to Hitler annexation of the […]

Categories: International • Tags: crimea, democracy, european union, far right, russia, ukraine, vladimir putin, western policy

NOT QUITE BLACK AND WHITE

March 8, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Photos that are not quite black and white, not quite colour. Check out also my photography website, Light Infusion.

Categories: Photos • Tags: photos

THE HUMAN HEART OF SACRED ART

March 5, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I have written a number of posts recently on the meaning of the sacred in art, including a discussion of music, in the wake of John Taverner’s death, and of the meaning of Marilynne Robinson’s novels. I pulled together some these posts and themes for an essay in the latest issue of New Humanist. It still feels like a work in progress; I will hopefully develop the ideas over time. There is a passage in Marilynne Robison’s novel Gilead in which the […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books • Tags: art, dante, dieric bouts, humanism, leszek kolakowski, marilynne robinson, modernism, religion, religious art, rothko, sacred