Author Archives: Kenan Malik

…BUT AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM

November 28, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week, I posted an essay ‘In defence of diversity’. But if I am in favour of diversity, I am most certainly critical of multiculturalism. I have long argued that while we should value diversity as a form of lived experience, we should scorn multiculturalism as a political policy. So, as a complement to my defence of diversity, here are extracts from a series of essays and talks from over the years which sum up my critique of multicuturalism. […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, british asians, british politics, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, david goodhart, edmund burke, free speech, immigration, integration, multiculturalism, muslims, rushdie affair

IN DEFENCE OF DIVERSITY

November 25, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There has recently been built in Merton in south London a ‘mega mosque’ that has inevitably become the focus of much controversy. In his book The British Dream, David Goodhart, director of the centre-left think tank Demos, takes the mosque as symbolic of the unacceptable change that immigration has wrought upon the nation. The mosque, he writes, ‘replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles — an icon […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: christopher caldwell, cultural diversity, david goodhart, fortress europe, identity politics, immigration, jews, lampedusa, paul collier, racism, robert putnam, working class

BUDDHIST POGROMS AND RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS

November 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more amenable than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, many scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and human psychology. Even many of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure, albeit as a philosophy rather than as a faith. For most of its Western sympathisers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International • Tags: aung sang suu kyi, buddhism, islam, myanmar, religion, religious violence, rohingya, sri lanka

WHAT IS SACRED ABOUT SACRED MUSIC?

November 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The death last week of composer John Tavener has led me to think about the idea of the ‘sacred’ in music. A profoundly religious man – he was a convert to Russian Orthodoxy – Tavener’s faith and sense of mysticism suffused much of his music. Historically, and in the minds of most people today, the sacred in music is, as it was with Tavener, inextricably linked with religious faith. Yet, I think that we lose something of what is ‘sacred’ about sacred […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books • Tags: art, britten, classical music, leszek kolakowski, messiaen, modernism, religion, religious art, rothko, sacred, stravinsky

WHEN DOES CRITICISM OF ISLAM BECOME ISLAMOPHOBIA?

November 14, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am taking part on Friday in a discussion entitled ‘When does criticism of Islam become Islamophobia?’, hosted by Oxash, the Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists. So, I thought it might be worth setting out the basic points that undergird my own thinking about the relationship between criticism, Islam and Islamophobia. . 1 Islamophobia is a problematic term. This is not because hatred of, or discrimination against, Muslims does not exist. Clearly it does. Islamophobia is a problematic term because […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: clash of civilizations, free speech, islam, islamophobia, racism

LONDON, OLD AND NEW

November 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

It was a glorious day in London yesterday, a perfect excuse to have a wander through the City. There are few places in which architecture ancient and modern is so jumbled together. I stumbled across a little space that I never knew existed. St Dunstan in the East is a church originally built in the eleventh century, and rebuilt by Christopher Wren after it had been damaged in the Great Fire of London. It was bombed and almost destroyed during […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: architecture, churches, london, modernism

A TRIBAL VIEW OF PRESS FREEDOM

November 8, 2013 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the debate about press regulation in Britain. It is published in the INYT under the headline ‘Britain Needs a First Amendment’. Here are the opening paragraphs and a link through to the INYT essay. Last month two figures at the heart of Britain’s political and journalistic establishment went on trial. Rebekah Brooks is the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and a close friend of Prime Minister […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech, Politics • Tags: british politics, edward snowden, first, free press, free speech, leveson inquiry

TRUST IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY

November 4, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Sociologists have traditionally thought about the consequences of ethnic diversity in one of two ways. The ‘conflict’ model claims that the more that diverse groups interact, the more social tension there will be. The ‘contact’ model, on the other hand, suggests that the more that different groups interact, the less they will fear each other. Unsurprisingly the first model is favoured by conservatives to justify restrictions on immigration, while liberals often call on the second in arguing for multicultural education. […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: cultural diversity, david goodhart, diversity, immigration, london, migration, multiculturalism, paul collier, robert putnam, social cohesion, trust

THE LONDON DIFFERENCE

October 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on London and immigration policy that was published las month in the International New York Times (I could not contractually published it on Pandaemonium till now). Not so long ago there was a beer commercial on British TV in which two pointy-headed aliens order a pint in a rural pub. ‘Up from London, are we?’, the barman asks politely. If the rest of Britain often views London as a planet from outer space, […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: boris johnson, british politics, david cameron, immigration, london, working class

AN OPEN DOOR TO DISASTER?

October 27, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away this week, there are no new posts, but I am delving into the archives for material not previously published on Pandaemonium. Back in 2004 I made a programme for BBC Radio 4’s Analysis strand on the immigration debate, contrasting the arguments of open door, closed door and managed migration advocates. Among those taking part were David Coleman, Professor of Demography, University of Oxford; Geoff Dench, of the Institute of Community Studies; Nigel Harris, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University College London; Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation; Sarah […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: broadcasts, diversity, immigration, migration

CARTOON VIEW OF THE AUTHENTIC MUSLIM

October 23, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for the next week, so I am publishing some old material that has not previously appeared on Pandaemonium. Kåre Bluitgen’s book The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Mohammed has just been published in English. Back in 2005, it was Bluitgen’s failure to find artists willing to drawn pictures of Mohammad for his book that eventually led to the Danish cartoon crisis. So, here is an edited extract from my 2009 book From Fatwa to Jihad that tells […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, free speech, islam, islamism, kenan malik's books, liberties, muslims, rushdie affair

THE NOT-SO-SECRET HISTORY OF CAPITALISM

October 20, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is a coda to my review of Paul Collier’s book Exodus. In Exodus, Collier makes a case for restrictions on immigration, from the perspective both of the countries of origin and of the host countries to which they migrate. In my review I questioned the moral and social arguments that Collier employs to justify his arguments, and suggested that ‘there is often a chasm between that evidence and Collier’s more contentious arguments’, while many of his policy prescriptions ‘are […]

Categories: History • Tags: capitalism, eric williams, frantz fanon, imperialism, paul collier, poverty, progress, racism, robin blackburn, slavery, working class

SATAN’S WORK [GOD AND EVIL, PART 2]

October 16, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the second part of my essay on ‘God and evil’, exploring the problem of evil for Christianity and other monotheistic religions. The first part, which I published on Sunday, looked at the question of Original Sin. This second part examines the idea of Satan, and the tension in monotheistic religions between the idea that God is a necessary bulwark against evil (‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted’) and the fact that belief in God leads many to accept […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: augustine, bible, blake, book of job, christianity, dostoevsky, evil, free will, god, hell, judaism, original sin, religion, richard swinburne, satan

GOD AND EVIL

October 13, 2013 by Kenan Malik

No, not a screed on the evils of religion, but an exploration of how monotheistic faiths (and Christianity in particular) account for evil in the world. It is another in the ‘Lost Pages’ series – sections of The Quest for a Moral Compass, my book on the global history of ethics, that I had to cut from the final version for reasons of space. Previous excerpts were on Machiavelli, Descartes, Locke and Greek cynics, skeptics, atomists and relativists. Since this extract is long, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: augustine, bible, book of job, christianity, evil, free will, god, original sin, religion, satan

A POLICY WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE

October 9, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The Italian government declared last Friday to be a national day of mourning. President Giorgio Napolitano talked of the latest in ‘a succession of true slaughters of innocents’. ‘We must end this now’, insisted Jean-Claude Mignon, head of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly. ‘I hope that this will be the last time we see a tragedy of this kind’. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the disaster should be ‘a spur to action’. Pope Francis called it ‘a […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: fortress europe, immigration, italy, lampedusa, migration