Author Archives: Kenan Malik

ABORTION, MEHDI HASAN, FREE SPEECH AND THE LEFT

October 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Mehdi Hasan, political director of the Huffington Post UK, has an essay in the current issue of the New Statesman, of which he was until recently the political editor, arguing that the progressive stance on abortion is to oppose it. The article inevitably created a storm on Twitter and elsewhere on the web, a storm at which Hasan took umbrage. ‘Time to add abortion to the list of issues – Islam, Iran’s nuclear programme etc – that can’t be discussed […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: abortion, equality, free speech, freedom struggles, mehdi hasan, moral autonomy, women's rights

ON NUANCE AND ITS BAGGAGE

October 10, 2012 by Kenan Malik

On Monday I chaired an illuminating discussion called ‘Inside the Mind of the Taliban’ with Alex Strick van Linschoten, Felix Kuehn and Jason Elliot. Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn, who until recently lived in Kandahar, have written a series of outstanding books on Afghanistan, including An Enemy We Created, which tells the story of how the American insistence that al Qaeda and the Taliban were in effect a single, unified enemy, and Washington’s view of the Taliban as just another […]

Categories: International • Tags: afghanistan, alex strick von lindschoeten, felix kuehn, jason elliot, relativism, taliban, universalism, war on terror

ON THE SECOND COMING OF RELIGION

October 4, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My essay on ‘The Myths of Muslim Rage’ sparked a debate about the relationship between religion and politics. Many challenged the idea that the conflicts over The Satanic Verses two decades ago, and over the Innocence of Muslims now, find their roots as much in political conflict as in religious belief. ‘Regardless of who may have been “pulling the strings” and for what reasons’, as one critic put it in commenting on the essay, ‘the fact that those strings can […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: alister mcgrath, atheism, charles taylor, darwin, fundamentalism, identity politics, islam, islamism, linda woodhead, marx, nietzsche, nilufer gole, olivier, paul heelas, religion, return of religion, secularism

A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

September 30, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Every month London’s Natural History Museum organizes a sleepover. A couple of hundred excitable children (and their adult hangers-on) spend an evening taking part in activities before getting into sleeping bags in the shadow of Dippy in the Great Hall. My daughter went along this month, with a few of her friends, as a birthday treat. And I, of course, was one of the adult hangers-on. I probably enjoyed it as much as they did (apart from a night lost […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: dinosnores, natural history museum

THE MYTHS OF MUSLIM RAGE

September 26, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Joseph Anton, has hit the bookshelves just as the world has become embroiled in a new controversy over Islamic sensibilities. The extraordinary violence unleashed across the Muslim world by Innocence of Muslims, an obscure US-made video, has left many bewildered and perplexed. Rushdie was, of course, at the centre of the most famous confrontation over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. The publication in 1988 of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, launched a worldwide campaign against the […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: arab spring, free speech, innocence of muslims, islam, islamism, joseph anton, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

‘OF DEBATE, OF DISPUTE, OF DISSENT’

September 20, 2012 by Kenan Malik

When he was a child Salman Rushdie’s 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 that poured like a waterfall from the Kathasaritsagara’, the famous 11th-century Sanskrit collection of myths, the ‘tales of the mighty heroes collected in the Hamzanama’, that tell of the legendary exploits of Amir Hamza, uncle to the Prophet Mohammed, and the […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, iran, islam, islamism, joseph anton, midnight's children, peter mayer, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

GHOSTS OF JOSEPH ANTON’S PAST

September 16, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton is published tomorrow. (Joseph Anton, for those who don’t know, was the name that Rushdie adopted during his years in hiding, a name borrowed from two of his favourite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov.) Joseph Anton is not simply a memoir; it is a vital piece of social history. It is Rushdie’s first real account of the years under the shadow of the fatwa, the story from the inside of a changing world. I will review […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: bradford, free speech, hanif kureishi, islam, islamism, joseph anton, muslims, my beautiful laundrette, penguin books, peter mayer, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, sher azam, spycatcher, the satanic verses, william nygaard

HERE WE GO AGAIN

September 14, 2012 by Kenan Malik

One thing should be clear. The violence across the Muslim world in response to an American anti-Islamic film has nothing to do with that film. Yes, The Innocence of Muslims is a risibly crude diatribe against Islam. But this obscure film that barely anyone had seen till last week is no more the source of the current violence than God is the source of the Qur’an. The details of the rioting in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador and sparked […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, free speech, islam, islamism, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

September 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

On the anniversary of 9/11, here is a playlist of my 20 favourite songs about New York. Given that no city can boast as great a back catalogue, there are many tracks that I have been forced to leave out – Public Enemy’s ‘A Letter to the New York Post‘, for instance, the Ramones’ ’53rd and 3rd’, Ben E King’s ‘Spanish Harlem’, Billie Holiday’s ‘Autumn in New York City’, to mention but four – and there will be many more […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: 9/11, music, new york

ON DESCRIBING THE OTHER

September 7, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I had assumed that my post on Judith Butler and the Adorno Prize would draw most fire from supporters of Israel incensed at my defence of Butler’s right to win the Prize. In fact it seems to have most annoyed supporters of Butler who have taken umbrage at my comments about her ‘impenetrable prose’. My criticism is not primarily about Butler’s style; it is principally about the substance of her arguments and, more broadly, of poststructuralist arguments. I am not […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: edward said, judith butler, kenan malik's books, levinas, michel foucault, orientalism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, richard rorty

INTELLECTUAL CHARLATANS & ACADEMIC WITCH-HUNTERS

September 3, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Judith Butler is a queen, perhaps the queen, of poststructuralist philosophy. A pioneer of queer theory and one of the world’s leading feminist philosophers, she made her name with her 1990 book, Gender Trouble, which dismisses the idea of sex and gender as fixed categories, viewing them instead as forms of social artifice. Butler introduced in the book the concept of gender as ‘performativity’: by behaving as if there were male and female ‘natures’ we create the social fiction that these natures […]

Categories: Academia, Free Speech • Tags: academic freedom, adorno prize, anti-semitism, cultural boycott, free speech, israel, judith butler, martha nussbaum, michel foucault, palestine, post-structuralism, postmodernism

ABORTION AND CONSCIENCE

August 30, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Religious freedom, I argued in my Notes on Religious Freedom, is not a special kind of liberty but one of a broader set of freedoms of conscience, belief, assembly and action. Whatever one’s beliefs, secular or religious, there should be complete freedom to express them, short of inciting violence or other forms of physical harm to others. Whatever one’s beliefs, secular or religious, there should be freedom to assemble to promote them. And whatever one’s beliefs, secular or religious, there should […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: abortion, atheism, creationism, ethics, peter singer, religious freedom, utilitarianism

‘MYSTERY CREATES WONDER…’

August 26, 2012 by Kenan Malik

‘…and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.’ It is not the phrase for which Neil Armstrong, who sadly died this weekend, will always be remembered. But it is the one that perhaps best sums up not just Armstrong’s vision but also the sense that to be human is forever to be reaching out to grasp what may seem beyond us. And that once we stop doing this, we diminish ourselves as humans. The moon landing was one […]

Categories: Human • Tags: moon landing, neil armstrong, progress, technology

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND AUTHORITARIAN ATHEISTS

August 22, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My ‘Notes on Religious Freedom’, a shorter version of which appeared in New Humanist, was picked up by Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True and led to a fascinating debate, much of it critical of my arguments. I am grateful to WEIT for linking to the essay and for hosting the debate. What was striking about much of the criticism was the degree to which it was underpinned by deeply authoritarian sentiments. I have observed before the way that […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: atheism, ethics, free speech, liberties, new atheism, religious freedom

LISTENING TO THE BANNED

August 19, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the week in which three members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned at the end of what was effectively a show trial in Moscow, it is worth flagging up this album of music by artists who have been banned, censored or imprisoned in their homeland. It is produced by the Norwegian artist Deeyah and Freemuse, an organization campaigning for freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide.

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: free speech, freedom struggles, music