Category Archives: Free Speech

BLASPHEMY, RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

October 29, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on a European Court of Human Rights ruling and on changing forms of blasphemy law, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the contrast between the EU’s response to Italy on immigration and the budget). It was published in the Observer, 28 October 2018, under the headline ‘None of us should enjoy the right to have our beliefs shielded from abuse‘. Should it be illegal to call the prophet Muhammad […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: blasphemy, censorship, european court of human rights, free speech, gay news, iqbal sacranie, islam, james kirkup, mary whitehouse, muhammad

A LITTLE MESSAGE FROM TWITTER…

October 26, 2018 by Kenan Malik

So, there I was writing an article on blasphemy and censorship (my Observer column, to be published tomorrow), when an email from Twitter Legal dropped into my inbox. It began: We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received official correspondence regarding your Twitter account, @kenanmalik. The correspondence claims that the following Tweet, is illegal: https://twitter.com/kenanmalik/status/1041253630018502656 The tweet to which it refers was a link to the Jesus and Mo cartoon shown at the top. The email continued: Twitter has […]

Categories: Free Speech, Pandaemonium • Tags: censorship, free speech, jesus and mo, twitter

AFTER THE SATANIC VERSES

October 1, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the legacy of the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on a call to halt the housing of asylum seekers in Sunderland). It was published in the Observer, 30 September 2018, under the headline ‘The Satanic Verses sowed the seeds of rifts that have grown ever wider’. Thirty years ago last week, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was published. Rushdie was then perhaps the most celebrated […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: british politics, censorship, clash of civilizations, free speech, identity politics, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, same sex marriage, the satanic verses

A CENSORSHIP LESS VISIBLE

September 22, 2018 by Kenan Malik

These were my opening remarks at a debate on censorship in the theatre, held at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, 20 September 2018. Other speakers included Shereener Browne, Agnieszka Kolek and Anders Lustgarten. One of the problems in discussing censorship is that we often don’t recognize censorship for what it is. There is no longer the Lord Chamberlain marking scripts and cutting out the unacceptable. Instead, we, in effect, ourselves mark them. And that, ironically, makes censorship not more, but less, visible. In all my […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: behzti, censorship, exhibit b, free speech, kehinde andrews, stella odunlame, theatre

FREE SPEECH, CULTURE AND IDENTITY: A GERMAN INTERVIEW

September 14, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This is a translation of part of an interview I gave to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on questions of free speech, multiculturalism and identity. The full interview is here. What restrictions should there be on freedom of expression? Should everyone always be allowed to say everything? It’s widely accepted today that in a plural society freedom of expression needs to be curtailed in the name of tolerance or respect. Otherwise minorities could suffer. I disagree. It’s precisely because we do […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Multiculturalism • Tags: afd, culture, free speech, germany, hate speech, identity politics, multiculturalism

WHY DEBATE BANNON?

September 10, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the controversy over Steve Bannon’s invitation to the New Yorker festival,, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Swedish elections). It was published in the Observer, 9 September 2018, under the headline ‘Condemning all debate with Bannon amounts to giving up on politics’. Two memes have become central to much contemporary political debate. The first is that we need to break out of our echo chambers. The second is […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Politics • Tags: alt right, david remnick, donald trump, far right, free speech, new yorker, steve bannon

SILENCED BY THE WORKPLACE

August 6, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This was the main article in my Observer column this week. It was published on 22 July 2018, under the headline ‘Why are employers allowed to police what we say as private citizens?’ Angela Williamson needed an abortion. The trouble was, she lived in Tasmania. Abortion is legal in the state, but the last abortion clinic closed in December. So, this February, Williamson was forced to travel to Melbourne for her operation. Distressed and angry, she dashed off a few tweets to […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: abortion, angela williamson, free speech, privacy, public sphere, twitter

BANNED IN PAKISTAN

July 20, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This post is about readers in Pakistan. Unfortunately readers in Pakistan won’t actually be able to read this. Which is what this post is about. Pandaemonium is a WordPress site. This week WordPress received an email from the ‘Web Analysis Team’ of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ‘The webpages hosted on your platform are extremely Blasphemous and are hurting the sentiments of many Muslims around Pakistan’, it read. What particularly seemed to concern the PTA were my articles about Charlie […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: blasphemy, censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, liberal hypocrisy, pakistan, racism

‘TROUBLE IS AT THE HEART OF WHAT WE DO’

May 18, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Last week Pater Mayer died. He was a giant of the publishing industry. An American, he was in 1978 given the job of rescuing the venerable British publishers Penguin, which then had become almost defunct. He turned it into a global brand, and a major force in publishing. He transformed publishing in India by founding of Penguin India. Ten years later came the event that was to define both Mayer and Penguin. In September 1988 Penguin published Salman Rushdie’s The […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ayatollah khomeini, fatwa, free speech, islamism, penguin books, peter mayer, publishing, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

ON THE ASSASSINATION OF KATIE HOPKINS

April 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the row over the BBC’s broadcast of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood speech’). It was published in the Observer, 15 April 2018, under the headline ‘Why provocateur Katie Hopkins is the perfect symbol for our tribal age’. I have not seen the play. But I am going to write about it. Which seems an apt metaphor for the current state of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: free speech, hate speech, immigration, katie hopkins, liberal hypocrisy, the assassination of katie hopkins

SHOULD OFFENCE BE BANNED? OR HATE?

March 25, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on the necessity of abortion rights). It was published in the Observer, 25 March 2018, under the headline ‘The ‘Nazi pug’: giving offence is inevitable and often necessary in a plural society’. Does making a film of a dog giving a Nazi salute constitute a hate crime? And should high street retailers stock racist and Nazi books? Two questions raised this week […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: anti-racism, anti-semitism, censorship, free speech, hate speech, hope not hate, left, offence, pluralism

DONALD TRUMP AND BRITAIN’S LIBEL LAWS

February 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on Donald Trump’s fancy for stricter libel laws. It was published under the headline ‘Trump Wants British Libel Laws. America Does Not.’ While American lawmakers once sought to protect their citizens from the clutches of British libel law, Mr. Trump now wants British-style laws in the United States. . After a long campaign by free-speech organizations, the British libel law was finally amended five years ago. The 2013 […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech, International • Tags: british libel laws, british politics, donald trump, first amendment, free speech, libel, libel tourism, usa

FAKE NEWS AND THE GATEKEEPERS OF TRUTH

February 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece in response to a Treasury tweet on how British taxpayers ‘helped end the slave trade‘.) It was published in the Observer, 11 February 2018, under the headline ‘Fake news has a long history. Beware the state being keeper of “the truth”‘. . Before Facebook, there was the coffee house. In the 17th-century, panic gripped British royal circles that these newly established drinking […]

Categories: Free Speech, Politics • Tags: censorship, donald trump, emmanuel macron, fake news, free speech

LESS A DEBATE THAN POLITICAL TROLLING

December 3, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of an article published in the Observer, 3 December2017, under the headline ‘When crude tweets set the global agenda we are surely in a new age of politics’. The most powerful leader in the world tweets like a teenage Nazi on 4chan whose sole aim is to create outrage. Three retweets of anti-Muslim hatred first tweeted by the deputy leader of a British neo-Nazi group do indeed cause global outrage. British politics becomes consumed by […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Politics • Tags: alt right, anti-muslim hatred, donald trump, far right, islamophobia, muslims, racism, twitter, usa

IN SUPPORT OF OSMAN KAVALA

October 26, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Imagine a seminar in Washington. Around the table are Bernie Sanders supporters and alt right activists, fans of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump voters, auto workers and Wall Street bankers, abortion activists and Evangelical Christians. And all discussing the question of America’s political future, civilly and articulately, with deep disagreements but also with mutual respect. It would be difficult to imagine this in Washington. Still less that a similar seminar could take place in Istanbul. Yet, when I gave a […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: armenia, censorship, free speech, kurds, liberties, osman kavala, turkey

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