Britain | Pandaemonium

FROM STREETFIGHTERS TO BOOKBURNERS

March 30, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week I published an extract from my book From Fatwa to Jihad, that told the story of how the Asian Youth Movements were created in Britain in the 1970s. This second extract explains how the British state and religious conservatives joined forces to marginalise secular radicals in the name of multiculturalism. This is the story of how Bradford came to be painted green. The same story could be told about towns all over Britain. In the summer of […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: asian youth movement, black identity, bradford, britain, british asians, From Fatwa to Jihad, identity politics, kenan malik's books, multiculturalism, racism, secularism

HERE TO STAY, HERE TO FIGHT

March 28, 2012 by Kenan Malik

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary this week by Zaiba Malik on the history of the Asian Youth Movements. For many of us who grew up in 1970s and 1980s, the AYMs were a central feature of our lives. Radical and secular, the movements challenged both the vicious racism that defined Britain in that era and many traditional values too, helping to establish an alternative leadership in Asian communities that confronted the conservatives on issues such as the role of […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: asian youth movement, black identity, britain, british asians, identity politics, kenan malik's books, racism, secularism

MORAL POVERTY AND THE RIOTS

August 12, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The riots, David Cameron told Parliament this week, revealed a ‘deep moral failure’ in British society. It’s an argument echoed by many others, from Melanie Phillips to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The language of morality, and of moral failure, comes easily to the lips of rightwing politicians and pundits, being all too often a means of individualizing social issues, of pinning the blame on some of the weakest in society for the problems caused by public policy, social inequality and […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: big society, britain, british politics, david cameron, ethics, market ideology, melanie phillips, morality, poverty, protests, riots

FIVE QUICK POINTS ABOUT THE RIOTS

August 9, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I am writing a longer and more reflective piece, but in the meantime here are five quick points about the riots in London and elsewhere: 1 This is not a rerun of the inner city riots that shook Britain in the late seventies and the eighties. Those riots were a direct challenge to oppressive policing and to mass unemployment. They threatened the social fabric of Britain’s inner cities and forced the government to rethink its mechanisms of social control. Today’s […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: britain, british politics, riots

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER. AND POWER TELLING TRUTH

July 13, 2011 by Kenan Malik

So, Rupert Murdoch has closed down the News of the World. He’s given up on taking control of BSkyB (at least for now). So where next? This is paradoxically a dangerous moment for those who want see a free and open press. For however much we might despise Murdoch, his business methods and his journalistic ethics, however much we might feel a sense of schadenfreude at the implosion of Murdoch’s media empire, we should nevertheless be wary of many of […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: british politics, free speech, journalism

MULTICULTURALISM AND THE ROAD TO 7/7

July 7, 2011 by Kenan Malik

This is my debut op-ed essay for the New York Times, a reflection on 7/7, multiculturalism and Islamism, which was published today under the title ‘Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise’. The NYT version is (very) slightly shorter than this. Six years ago today, on July 7, 2005, Islamic suicide bombers attacked London’s transit system. They blew up three subway trains and a bus, leaving 52 people dead and a nation groping for answers. In one sense the meaning of 7/7 is as clear to […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, british politics, immigration, islamism, mcb, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, terrorism

HOW I BECAME GOBBY AND DISSING

May 26, 2011 by Kenan Malik

For many, Hanif Kureishi is a fine comic writer, a superb scriptwriter and an important essayist. He has produced a number of masterpieces (The Buddha of Suburbia, My Beautiful Launderette) and, inevitably, a few duds too. For British Asians of a particular generation, however, he is much more than this. For those of us who came of age in the 1980s, Kureishi is one of the writers who helped us discover our voice, one of the writers through whose words we […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech, Race & Immigration • Tags: british asians, hanif kureishi, identity politics, racism, rushdie affair

FOR PRIVACY. AGAINST PRIVACY LAWS

May 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In my previous posts on gossip and on l’affair dsk I made two main points with respect to privacy, injunctions and censorship. First, that privacy is a valued asset and a civilized society should know the distinction between the public sphere and the private realm. Second, that censorship and legal constraints on reporting are not useful ways of maintaining that distinction, either from a pragmatic point of view or as a matter of principle. I think that the farce over Twitter, […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: british politics, free speech, journalism, law, libel, liberties, privacy, social media

GOSSIP, PRIVACY AND CENSORSHIP

May 13, 2011 by Kenan Malik

‘What gives a journalist the right to know whom you slept with last night?’ That was a question posed by my fellow panelist Clifford Longley to Gavin Millar QC on this week’s The Moral Maze which explored the limits of privacy and free speech. Millar avoided answering the question. But the answer is not as straightforward as many might imagine. Certainly a journalist has no ‘right’ to know with whom I slept. But (unless he uses illegal methods such as, say, […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: british politics, celebrity culture, free speech, human rights, journalism, libel, max mosley, moral maze, privacy

OFF WITH THEIR (NOT SO) SYMBOLIC HEADS

April 28, 2011 by Kenan Malik

It is a family of dysfunctional souls and disreputable characters A family that can boast of friendships with some of the world’s most brutal dictators and with any number of convicted criminals. A family that, in an age that places great value upon equality, democracy, and meritocracy, represents by its very existence the claims of inequality, privilege and unearned power. A family that at a time of austerity and hardship is happy to flaunt its wealth and excess. By any […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: british politics, celebrity culture, democracy, monarchy, republicanism, royal prerogative