Category Archives: Atheism & Religion

A FOX DOES NOT MAKE A GOOD PROTECTOR OF THE HEN COOP

November 2, 2012 by Kenan Malik

The Canadian government is in the process of setting up an Office of Religious Freedom. Religious freedom is about the right of people to hold certain beliefs, and to act upon them, so long as in so doing they do not harm others or discriminate against them in the public sphere. It is the right to be free from interference from other faiths and from the state. For a government to set up an official body to oversee religious freedom […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: canada, identity politics, multiculturalism, religion, religious freedom, secularism

HOW TO BE SECULAR [PART 2]

October 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Jacques Berlinerblau, whoses book How to be Secular I reviewed in my last post, took umbrage on Twitter at my characterisation of his argument as anti-democratic. Twitter is not the best medium to have nuanced debate on these kinds of issues, but it was an interesting discussion (the heart of which was a debate not so much about secularism as about democracy) so I have curated the tweets via Storify (slightly reordered to make better sense of the discussion), with some comments thrown in. I hope, however that Jacques […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, democracy, religion, religious freedom, secularism

HOW TO BE SECULAR? PERHAPS NOT

October 27, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Back at the beginning of the US Presidential campaign Mitt Romney accused Barack Obama of launching ‘a war on religion’ and of wanting ‘to establish a religion in America known as secularism’. The irony is that Obama himself, even before entering the White House, had made clear his own disdain for secularism. In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama had chided fellow Democrats for equating ‘tolerance with secularism’. In embracing secularism, he wrote, Democrats ‘forfeit the moral language that […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, locke, new atheism, religion, religious freedom, secularism

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

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

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

NOTES ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

June 17, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Given the degree of fractious debate recently over ‘religious freedom’ – from questions of blasphemy and ‘defamation’ to the storm over gay marriage, from the controversy over the banning of the burqa to the hostility directed at the ‘Obamacare’ plan to include contraception in health insurance cover – I have been rethinking the question of freedom of religion. These notes are a starting point for debate, not a fully-fleshed out argument. 1 Religious freedom occupies a special place in contemporary political […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: christianity, equality, ethics, free speech, gay rights, locke, religion, religious freedom, secularism, spinoza

‘THE GREATEST NOVEL OF BELIEF AND UNBELIEF’

February 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

A few months ago I chose five books to illustrate the idea of morality without God for The Browser’s Five Books interviews. Now, Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, has picked his list of five works through which to introduce Christianity. One book is common to both lists: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is not surprising that both Harries and I should so treasure Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel. There are few writers who possess the psychological power and the unnerving eye of Dostoevsky, few […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: christianity, dostoevsky, evil, god, religion, the brothers karamazov

WHO NEEDS GOD?

February 6, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Like a lion, perhaps, in a den of Daniels, I gave a talk last week on ‘Why I am an atheist’ to theology students at Bristol’s Trinity College. It was an enjoyable event, and hopefully helped me to think through and sharpen my arguments (though not, I suspect, to change anyone’s mind). Here’s the transcript. There are three kinds of arguments that an atheist can make in defence of the insistence that no God exists. First, he or she can argue […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, atheism, camus, christianity, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, first cause, god, greek philosophy, religion, william craig

BEYOND THE SACRED

January 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave a talk called ‘Beyond the sacred’, on the changing character of ideas of the sacred and of blasphemy, at a conference on blasphemy organised this weekend by the Centre for Inquiry at London’s Conway Hall on Saturday. Here is a transcript. To talk about blasphemy is also to talk about the idea of the sacred. To see something as blasphemous is to see it in some way as violating a sacred space. In recent years, both the notion […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: behzti, blasphemy, charles taylor, free speech, identity politics, islamism, jesus and mo, kolokowski, liberties, muslims, olivier roy, religion, rushdie affair, sacred, salman rushdie, ziauddin sardar

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR A DIVINE UMBRELLA

December 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

TWO SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS IN THE BACK OF THE CAR DEBATING GOD: C: I don’t believe in God. A: I do. C: So where does he live? A: In the sky, of course. C: So why have astronauts never seen him? A: They were probably too busy doing things. C: No they weren’t. They’re always looking out of the window in a rocket. A: How do you know? C: I’ve seen Apollo 13.

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: god, religion

SOME ARGUMENTS NEVER DIE

December 15, 2011 by Kenan Malik

‘That Church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government.’ Who wrote […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: catholicism, free speech, jews, liberties, locke, muslims, racism, spinoza

THE MYTHS OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE

October 20, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I wrote some notes a few months back on Pandaemonium on Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe‘. I reworked that post into an essay, which has now been published in the latest issue of New Humanist. And I’m posting it here, too. UPDATE: The original post (which is much longer than this essay) won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utøya earlier this year were the first […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anders breivik, aquinas, christianity, christopher caldwell, dark ages, enlightenment, eurabia, greek philosophy, human nature, jonathan israel, judaism, judeo-christian tradition, modernity, muslim rationalism, original sin, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, western civilization

GOD, THE UNIVERSE AND A BACON SARNIE

October 10, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The latest strip from the irrepressible Jesus and Mo may seem like a typical dig at the inconsistencies and illogicalities of religious faith. But, in its own inimitable way, it taps into one of the most difficult theological conumdrums for believers. A common argument in the increasingly tedious ‘God Wars’ is the claim by believers that atheists are naive about religious belief. They read holy books too literally and think of God as an old man with a white beard. […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, atheism, christianity, god, jesus and mo, morality, muslim rationalism, new atheism, religion, sam harris, secularism, terry eagleton, theology, via negativa

FIVE BOOKS ON MORALITY WITHOUT GOD

September 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I was asked by the The Browser, a wonderful, indispensable website that trawls the web and fishes out some of the best writing, to choose, for its ‘Five books’ section, five books (naturally) on morality without God. Here’s my somewhat eclectic list and the interview that accompanies it. Many believers think that the only way to be truly moral is to follow a religion which teaches us morality. How would you respond? One of the great selling points of religions – […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: al-ma'arri, arab literature, camus, dostoevsky, enlightenment, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, god, greek philosophy, human agency, humanism, islam, jonathan israel, plato, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza