Author Archives: Kenan Malik

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MULTICULTURALISM? [PART 2]

June 7, 2012 by Kenan Malik

This is the second part of the transcript of my Milton K Wong lecture that I delivered in Vancouver last week. I posted the first part earlier this week. The talk will be broadcast in full on 22 June on the CBC’s Ideas strand. The story I have told so far is of a Europe that is not as plural as many imagine it to be, and of immigrants less assertive of their cultural identities than they are claimed to be. Multicultural policies emerged not because […]

Categories: Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: anders breivik, behzti, british politics, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, danish cartoons, diversity, europe, far right, handsworth riots, isaiah berlin, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, riots, rushdie affair, will kymlicka

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MULTICULTURALISM? [PART 1]

June 4, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave the Milton K Wong lecture in Vancouver on Sunday. I very much enjoyed the event- it was a stunning venue, a superb audience and a good discussion of the issues. My thanks to the Laurier Institution, University of British Columbia and CBC for inviting me. Entitled ‘What is Wrong with Multiculturalism? A European Perpective’, the lecture pulled together many of the themes about immigration, identity, diversity and multiculturalism of which I have been talking and writing recently. It was […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: british asians, british politics, britishness, christopher caldwell, europe, french politics, germany, guest workers, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, parekh report, racism, turkish migrants

LLOYD NEWSON IN DEFENCE OF ‘CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?’

May 28, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Back in March I published a review of DV8’s extraordinary show Can We Talk About This?. I was both positive and critical of the show. It was I wrote, ‘unmissable theatre’, both ‘thought provoking and gut-wrenching, food for mind and heart’ and ‘the kind of bold, polemical spectacle that the theatre so badly needs’. Its weakness, I suggested, was as a polemic: The ambition of the show, and its willingness to stomp all over the debate, is its great strength; its […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: dv8, free speech, geert wilders, lloyd newson, multiculturalism, muslims, ray honeyford

‘CONFLICTING CREDOS BUT THE SAME VISION OF THE WORLD’

May 21, 2012 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of the first part of the talk I gave last week as part of the Criticise This! seminar in Ulcinj, Montenegro on ‘Rethinking the Question of Difference’. (The second part of the talk overlaps with the Milton K Wong lecture that I am giving in Vancouver next week; I will publish that in full.) The audience comprised mainly of artists, writers and critics, and the aim was to explore more deeply the philosophical and political underpinnings […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Multiculturalism • Tags: alain benoist, alain finkielkraut, black culture, charles taylor, cultural diversity, enlightenment, france, herder, identity politics, isaiah berlin, multiculturalism, native son, nouvelle droite, racism, richard wright, romanticism, tariq modood, walter benn michaels, will kymlicka, yugoslavia

THREE MYTHS OF IMMIGRATION

May 8, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I am giving the Milton K Wong Lecture in Vancouver in June. Entitled ‘What’s Wrong with Multiculturalism? A European Perspective’, it will try to explain to a Canadian audience, for whom multiculturalism has a very different meaning than it does to a European one, the contours of the European debate, as well as my disagreements with both sides. In particular I want to show why both multiculturalists and many of their critics (particularly their rightwing critics) buy into the same […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: british asians, british politics, britishness, christopher caldwell, europe, french politics, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racial science, racism, secularism, tariq modood

LLOYD BREVETT AND THE (OTHER) SOUNDS OF THE SIXTIES

May 5, 2012 by Kenan Malik

LLoyd Brevett, the great ska and rocksteady bassist, died on Thursday. He was one of the founders in 1963 of the Skatalites, the pioneers of ska, rocksteady and bluebeat. The group were together only for 18 months, but in those 18 months helped transform Jamaican music. Brevett went on to play with, and for, some of the greatest Jamaican bands and producers of the Sixties, including the Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Prince Buster and Lee Perry. ‘All my bass lines from […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: music, ska

THE SPECTRE OF LE PEN AND THE SHAME OF THE LEFT

May 1, 2012 by Kenan Malik

The incumbent candidate falters badly. His main opponent fares barely any better. The candidates from so-called ‘fringe’ parties garner more votes than either of the mainstream ones. The far right gains its biggest success. The only thing striking about the first round of the French elections was that there was nothing striking about it. It followed the pattern of almost every election across Europe over the past few years. This Sunday Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande will slug it out […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: austerity, communist party, democracy, euro crisis, european union, francois hollande, french politics, front national, geert wilders, immigration, jean-luc melenchon, marine le pen, nikolas sarkozy, pcf, racism

LOST IN EDEN

April 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I was in Cornwall earlier this month, and I finally got round to visiting the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan. The Eden Project is vastly overrated and grossly overpriced. There is something in its noisy mix of crass didacticism and rampant commercialism that renders it soulless and makes my heart sink. The Lost Gardens were, however, an unexpected find. I normally think of visiting gardens as barely a step above visiting country houses; and I’d rather watch […]

Categories: Photos

FAREWELL, FIRST AMENDMENT?

April 26, 2012 by Kenan Malik

in 2004, Tarek Mehanna traveled from America to Yemen with a friend. He claims he was searching out schools at which to study classical Islamic law. The US government insists that he was looking for a jihadi training camp. What all agree is that, even if he was looking for jihadis, he never found any. The US authorities accept that Mehanna never joined the jihadi groups he never found, nor ever funded any such groups. He did, however, on returning to the […]

Categories: Free Speech, War on terror • Tags: first amendment, free speech, jihadism, tarek mehanna, war on terror

ANDERS BREIVIK AND THE CULTURE OF DELUSION

April 23, 2012 by Kenan Malik

‘We want to create a European version of al-Qaeda’, the ‘most successful revolutionary movement in the world’. So claimed Anders Behring Breivik at his trial in Oslo last week. In his sick, twisted, paranoid fantasy world, Breivik sees himself as warrior defending Christian Europe against a Muslim invasion. Yet, nothing so resembles Breivik’s mindset as that of an Islamist jihadist. Not just because Breivik admires the organizational ability of al-Qaeda, but because both Breivik and jihadists draw upon the same […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, War on terror • Tags: anders breivik, christian europe, christopher caldwell, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, diversity, eurabia, islam, islamism, islamophobia, jihadism, mark steyn, melanie phillips, multiculturalism, sam harris, samuel huntington, tzvetan todorov

WHY HATE SPEECH SHOULD NOT BE BANNED

April 19, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave an interview last year to Peter Molnar for a book on the regulation of hate speech that he was editing with Michael Herz. The book comes out of a series of conferences and seminars organised by New York’s Cardozo School of Law and the Central European University in Budapest. (I presented a paper at a seminar in Budapest). Other contributors include Jeremy Waldron, Ronald Dworkin, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Nadine Strossen and Bhikhu Parekh. The book is finally published this […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: blasphemy, far right, free speech, hate speech, holocaust denial, homophobia, incitement laws, james watson, liberties, race relations act, racism, religion, religious hatred law, rwanda

CLR JAMES, FRANTZ FANON AND THE MEANING OF LIBERATION

April 16, 2012 by Kenan Malik

1776. 1789. 1917. The American. The French. The Russian. The three great revolutions of the modern world. The three revolutions with which everyone is familiar, each one telling a different story about modernity. Yet, as I argued in my previous post, the fourth great revolution that helped define modernity – the Haitian Revolution of 1791 – is one that barely anyone remembers these days. It was the first true successful revolt in history. But more than that, the Haitian Revolution was […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-imperialism, black politics, claude levi-strauss, clr james, frantz fanon, freedom struggles, haitian revolution, herder, imperialism, negritude, racism, sartre, separatism, universalism

LUST AND MEMORY

April 9, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I have, after many years of lusting after one, finally got myself a Nikon D7000. My battered old D40 is being retired. (Translated for those who are not photo geeks, it means that I have swapped a goodish camera for a greatish one.) I have not had a chance yet properly to use the D7000. But I have managed to trawl through my old D40 catalogues, a treasurehouse of memories, and picked out some of my favourite photos.

Categories: Photos

SHAWSHANK WITHOUT THE REDEMPTION

April 6, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Imagine being held in solitary confinement, not for a day, not for a year, but for forty years. Imagine entering a cell, four paces long, three paces wide, when Richard Nixon was in the White House and still being confined to that cell, as Barack Obama gears up for re-election. Imagine being confined to that cell for every minute of those forty years apart from time out to shower and a walk around an outdoor cage three times a week, […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties • Tags: angola 3, injustice, liberties, prisons, racism, usa

LIBERATING FREE SPEECH FROM THE SHACKLES OF BAD FAITH

April 2, 2012 by Kenan Malik

‘I have definitely become a free speech fundamentalist,’ says Flemming Rose. Perhaps that should not be surprising. It was, after all, Rose who, as culture editor of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, helped launch the Danish cartoon controversy in 2005. He had picked up on a story about the difficulties that children’s author Kåre Bluitgen had faced in finding an illustrator for a book he was writing on Islam. Every illustrator that Bluitgen had contacted had been worried that he would end […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: behzti, danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, index on censorship, islamism, islamophobia, jytte klausen, kenan malik's books, liberal hypocrisy, liberties, locke, racism, rushdie affair