Author Archives: Kenan Malik

THE BEAUTY OF LIGHT

August 4, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Painters have long loved the light of the Mediterranean – think of Cézanne and Chagall, Braque and Bonnard, Matisse and Picasso. Photographers, too. The light imbues something almost painterly to photographs. These were all taken on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. The first set was taken from the island of MlJet, mostly as dusk falls. The second is of Dubrovnik at night. A fading light

Categories: Photos • Tags: croatia, dalmatia, dubrovnik, dusk, landscape, mediterranean, nightime, seascape

TYRANNY IS ALWAYS TYRANNY, WHOEVER MAY BE THE TARGET

August 1, 2013 by Kenan Malik

When, on 3 July, the Egyptian army ousted President Mohammed Morsi, and took control of the nation, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as a coup but as the military acting on behalf of the people to protect the revolution. When the army imprisoned Morsi, and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, censored its media and suspended the constitution, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as an authoritarian crackdown but as measures necessary to check the ambitions of the Brotherhood and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: arab spring, arab world, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, muslim brotherhood, tony blair, western policy

FROM THE VAULTS: THE NATURE OF SEX

July 29, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a few weeks, I am raiding the archives for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. ‘The Nature of Sex’ was the title of the second of three talks entitled ‘Man Beast and Zombie’ that explored the political impact of evolutionary psychology and were broadcast on BBC Radio 4′s Westminster Hour in October/November 2001. (I published the first talk in this series, ‘Stone Age Politics’, earlier this month.) Inevitably the examples […]

Categories: Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: evolutionary psychology, glass ceiling, helen fisher, helena cronin, human nature, kingsley browne, rape, robert wright, sex differences, sex discrimination

FROM THE VAULTS: BLANK SLATES AND STRAW DOGS

July 25, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my series of old essays and talks about human nature that I have not previously published on Pandaemonium, this is a review of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and John Gray’s Straw Dogs. It was first published in Prospect, October 2002. Review of The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and Straw Dogs by John Gray, Prospect, October 2002 The psychologist Geoff Miller has called it a ‘paradigm shift’: the restoration of human nature into discussions of human behaviour, political […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: antihumanism, darwinism, evolutionary psychology, human agency, human nature, humanism, john gray, steven pinker

FROM THE VAULTS: ON FREEDOM AND FREE WILL

July 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for the next few weeks, I am raiding the vaults, as it were, for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. This is a review of Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, first published in New Statesman, February 2003 Review of Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, New Statesman, 10 February 2003 Humans are physical beings with evolved brains and evolved minds. Humans are also moral agents with consciousness and will. How should […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: daniel dennett, free will, human agency, human nature

FROM THE VAULTS: THE MYTH OF MARS AND VENUS

July 17, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Continuing, while I am away, my series of old essays and reviews on the theme of human nature, this is a review of Deborah Cameron’s The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages?, first published in the Sunday Telegraph, November 2007. Review of The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron, Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2007 My four year old daughter, like many girls of her age, has become obsessed by all things […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: evolutionary psychology, human nature, language, sex differences

FROM THE VAULTS: SO YOU THINK YOU ARE HUMAN?

July 14, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for the next few weeks, I am raiding the vaults, as it were, for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. This is a review of Felipe Fernández Armesto’s So You Think You Are Human?, first published in New Statesman in April 2004. Review of So You Think You are Human? by Felipe Fernández Armesto, New Statesman, 5 April 2004 There is an episode of Star Trek in which Data, the android who would be […]

Categories: History, Human • Tags: civilisation, human nature, progress

FROM THE VAULTS: STONE AGE POLITICS

July 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for the next few weeks, but rather than abandon Pandaemonium, I thought I would again raid the vaults, as it were, for old material that I have not published here. So, for the next few weeks, I have dug out essays, reviews, talks and broadcasts, broadly on the theme of human nature. Back in 2001, I gave a series of three talks on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour entitled ‘Man, Beast and Politics’ that explored the political impact […]

Categories: Human, Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: darwinism, evolutionary psychology, francis fukuyama, human nature, matt ridley, peter singer, sociobiology

ISLAM AND FREE SPEECH: AN OLD DEBATE

July 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

A 2006 debate, in fact, between myself and Imran Khan (the lawyer not the cricketer) on the issue of Islam, free speech and the Danish cartoons for a special Channel 4 Dispatches programme. I had not realized that the broadcast was available on YouTube. The issues we debated remain strikingly relevant. Perhaps the most telling moment came when the moderator Jon Snow announced an audience poll to see whether the cartoons should be shown on the programme. The audience overwhelmingly […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: broadcasts, danish cartoons, debates, free speech, islam, offence

STORIES PLUCKED FROM THE WORLDS IN-BETWEEN

July 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the foreword I have written for a new collection of essays on Salman Rushdie’s writing. Edited by Robert Eaglestone and Martin McQuillan, Salman Rushdie is part of Bloomsbury’s Contemporary Critical Perspectives series. When he was a child, Salman Rushdie recalls in his memoir Joseph Anton, his father read to him ‘the great wonder tales of the East’ – the stories of Scheherazade from the Thousand and One Nights, the animal fables of the ancient Indian Panchatantra, ‘the marvels […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: britain, free speech, rushdie affair, salman rushdie

IN A MAGICAL LIGHT

June 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I took these photos in Kew Gardens but played around with the luminance to transform the light by which they appear to be lit. The result is quite eerie and magical.

Categories: Photos

CYNICS, SKEPTICS, ATOMISTS AND RELATIVISTS

June 27, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In completing my book on the history of moral thought 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. So, I am running an occasional series publishing some of the more cogent ‘lost pages’ from the book. Previous excerpts were on Machiavelli and on Descartes. This extract is on Democritus, Thucydides and Protagoras. The book itself, which […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: cynicism, democritus, ethics, greek philosophy, history of ideas, history of moral thought, skepticism, thucydides

AN ESSAY ON THOMAS PAINE (JUST A LITTLE BIT CENSORED)

June 24, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In my talk on pluralism and the giving of offence, I mentioned my 1994 essay on Thomas Paine that had been censored by the Independent because I opened it with a quote from The Satanic Verses. Here is that essay, in the form in which it was finally published. And this is the quote from The Satanic Verses that was felt to be too offensive. It describes the moment that Salman, the scribe who writes down the revelations that Mahound receives from […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: christianity, edmund burke, enlightenment, free speech, offence, religion, rushdie affair, the satanic verses, tom paine

TO CAST THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN A RADICAL LIGHT

June 20, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There is no period of history that has been more analysed, debated, celebrated and disparaged than the Enlightenment. Unlike, say, the Renaissance or the Reformation, the Enlightenment is not simply a historical moment but one through which debates about the contemporary world are played out. From the role of science to the war on terror, from free speech to racism, there are few contemporary debates that do not engage with the Enlightenment, or, at least, with what we imagine the […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: christianity, descartes, dualism, enlightenment, ernst cassirer, hobbes, jonathan israel, kant, locke, max horkenheimer, monism, peter gay, radical enlightenment, reformation, religion, religious freedom, spinoza, theodor adorno

THE PLEASURES OF PLURALISM, THE PAIN OF OFFENCE

June 17, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I gave two talks this weekend. One was on ‘Turning diversity on its head’ at the sixth anniversary celebration of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), the other on’Offence and censorship’ at an Artangel ‘Party for Freedom’. The two talks overlapped, so here I have stitched them together into a single post. The cartoons are from the wonderful Jesus and Mo. Almost twenty years ago, in 1994, the Independent newspaper asked me to write an essay on Tom Paine, the eighteenth-century […]

Categories: Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, diversity, free speech, multiculturalism, offence, rushdie affair, tom paine