Author Archives: Kenan Malik

MIGRATION AND MORALITY

October 5, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Review of Exodus by Paul Collier (Allen Lane) Migration, Paul Collier observes ‘affects many groups, but only one has the practical power to control it: the indigenous population of host societies.’ So, he asks, ‘Should that group act in its self-interest, or balance the interests of all groups?’. That question is at the heart of Collier’s new book which aims to reframe the immigration debate. Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and co-Director […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: diversity, exodus, immigration, migration, multiculturalism, paul collier, racism, robert putnam

WHY WORKFARE ISN’T WORKING

October 1, 2013 by Kenan Malik

So, George Osborne has launched a new workfare scheme. Yet another one. (Yes I know, It’s not a proper workfare scheme but the kind of workfare-lite project favoured in Britain.) ‘Help to Work’ is the latest in a series of similar government schemes from the Work Programme to the Community Activity Programme to Mandatory Work Activity. Each has been created in response to the failure of the previous scheme. And each scheme in turn has failed. And every time a workfare scheme has failed, blame is […]

Categories: Britain, Economy • Tags: lawrence mead, unemployment, workfare

LONDON IS SPECIAL, BUT NOT THAT SPECIAL

September 29, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Next month the International Herald Tribune is reborn as the International New York Times. I will be writing a monthly column for the new paper. But, it seems, I write columns faster than the New York Times launches new brands. So my first essay, on the debate about London and immigration, is published this weekend in the New York Times and in the unreconstructed IHT. I cannot contractually publish the full essay on Pandaemonium until next month, but in the meantime here are […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, british politics, immigration, london

BEYOND THE VEIL

September 22, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The question of the Muslim veil seems never to leave the headlines for long. If the debate is not about whether states, such as France or Belgium, should have the right to ban the face veil in public, it is about what limits there should be to the wearing of the burqa or niqab in those countries, such as Britain or Germany, that do not ban it. The latest controversies have erupted in Britain after a defendant in a criminal trial […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Justice & Liberties • Tags: bernard-henri levy, burqa bans, civil society, law, liberalism, liberties, multiculturalism, religious freedom, secularism, women's rights

BOOKS, A BOOKSHOP AND A LITTLE INTRODUCTION

September 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The new Pandaemonium is slowly evolving. There is a new books page, and I have added the introductions to both From Fatwa to Jihad and Strange Fruit, as well as reviews of both books. I have put up, too, the opening section to my forthcoming book (or rather, extended essay) Multiculturalism and its Discontents, due out next month. There is now an online Pandaemonium bookshop (powered by Amazon) from which you can buy both my books and some of my favourite works […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE WAR OF THE CYNICS

September 15, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There are two wars being fought over Syria. There is a civil war on the streets of Homs and Aleppo and Ma’loula and Damascus, a war played out in the currency of bombs and bullets and (possibly) sarin. The consequences of this war are, so far, 100,000 dead, seven million displaced and a nation turned to rubble. Then there is the war on the global stage between outside players, a war played out in the grand halls of the UN, […]

Categories: International • Tags: chemical weapons, imperialism, russia, syria, war on terror, western policy

ON PABLO NERUDA

September 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

It was forty ago today that Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende, in a CIA-supported coup, replacing his democratically elected government with a bloody dictatorship. Twelve days after the coup, the poet Pablo Neruda died in mysterious circumstances, many believe murdered by the Pinochet regime. (Earlier this year a Chilean court ordered Neruda’s body to be exumed for forensic tests and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the man supposedly involved in poisoning the poet). Gabriel García […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International • Tags: chile, pablo neruda, poetry, salvador allende

BEHIND THE SCENES OF AMERICAN LULU

September 8, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Olga Neuwirth wanted to be the next Miles Davis. She was, as a teenager, a promising jazz trumpeter. But an accident damaged her jaw, and her trumpet-playing career. Today, Neuwirth is one of the most important contemporary classical composers, her signature her ability to draw upon, and weave together, a multitude of sources – from jazz to atonalism, from electronic to chamber music – into a musical collage, not exactly seamless, but where the joins become part of the performance. […]

Categories: Culture & Books

SYRIA: MORALITY AND REALITY

September 4, 2013 by Kenan Malik

First, the British parliament rejects David Cameron’s demand for an immediate military strike on Syria. Then, Barack Obama, seemingly all set to bomb Syria, decides to postpone any action until it wins backing from Congress (which is by no means a foregone conclusion). The extraordinary flip-flops and u-turns over policy towards Syria on both sides of the Atlantic last week might seem to express the triumph of the democratic process over hasty belligerence. They speak also, however, to the confusion […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: arab spring, britain, cia, freedom struggles, imperialism, iraq, morality, syria, use, war on terror, western policy

JOHN LOCKE AND THE NOT-QUITE-GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

August 25, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I have been publishing on Pandaemonium a series of ‘lost pages’ from The Quest for a Moral Compass, my forthcoming book on the history of moral thought. In completing the book, I had to cut the original manuscript quite considerably. Much of what has been lost is better off left on the cutting room floor. There are, however, some sections coherent enough to be worth reading. Previous excerpts were on Machiavelli, Descartes and Greek cynics, atomists, skeptics and relativists. This extract is about John Locke and the […]

Categories: History, History of moral thought • Tags: catholicism, english history, free speech, glorious revolution, locke, religious freedom, spinoza

ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION

August 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

On 29 August 1966, Sayyid Qutb, the ideological leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was hanged in Cairo’s military prison, on the orders of Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser. Qutb and the Brotherhood had, in 1952, supported Nasser when he seized power in a military coup that overthrew the monarchy. In return for his support, Nasser offered Qtub a government post, which the latter declined. The two, however, soon fell out. Nasser, who came to personify Arab secular nationalism, bloodily repressed […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: anwar sadat, arab spring, egypt, freedom struggles, hosni mubarak, islamism, liberalism, muslim brotherhood, nasser

TO BE BEWITCHED

August 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There are few musical instruments that can bewitch quite like a cello. I have been learning to play it, on and off, for almost a decade. Over the past year, as I have been finishing a book, it has been more off than on. Now, with the book safely tucked in bed, I can pick up a bow again. So, it seems a good time to put together a selection of my favourite cello pieces. It is in three parts. […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: cello, classical music, jazz, modernism, music

RELIGION IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

August 15, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Linda Woodhead is one of the most acute observers of contemporary religion. Professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University, director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society research programme, and organizer of the Westminster Faith Debates, her empirical work has helped shape the understanding of the ways in which the meaning of faith has transformed in recent decades. I am delighted that she has written an essay for Pandaemonium on the changing landscape of religious identity in Britain. The essay presents an […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: britain, catholicism, christianity, church of england, fundamentalism, linda woodhead, religion, secularism, thatcherism

WHAT DO BELIEVERS BELIEVE? (NOT WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT)

August 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Linda Woodhead is professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University and Director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society research programme. She is also one of the most acute observers of contemporary religion and religious identity. She has been conducting a series of surveys with YouGov on social and personal morality for the Westminster Faith Debates, of which she is the organiser. Linda is writing an essay for Pandaemonium on the changing character of religious identity, which I will publish that next […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain • Tags: abortion, assisted suicide, atheism, catholicism, christianity, islam, linda woodhead, morality, religion, same sex marriage, secularism

ON THE RELIGIOUS & CULTURAL LIMITS TO FREE SPEECH

August 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this year I took part in an exchange of letters with Nada Shabout, director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, which focused on the question: ‘Should religious or cultural sensibilities ever limit free speech?’ The first four letters were published in Index on Censorship magazine which had organized the debate. There was no space to take the debate further in print, but we agreed to continue the discussion, with the new […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, debates, free speech, islam, islamophobia, offence, racism, religion, religious freedom, rushdie affair