Category Archives: Justice & Liberties

CLR JAMES AND ME

May 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is an interview, about what CLR James means to me, that I gave to the BBC History Magazine, for its ‘My History Hero slot’. It is published in the June issue of the magazine. For more discussion of CLR James and his significance, see my essay ‘CLR James, Frantz Fanon and the meaning of liberation’. . When did you first hear about CLR James? In my teens. The experience of racism, and the struggle against it, introduced me to […]

Categories: History, Justice & Liberties • Tags: clr james, freedom struggles, marxism

RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE, BUDDHISM AND ISLAM

May 20, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column in the International New York Times. There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more appealing than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, and scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and psychology. Even some of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure. For most of its Western sympathizers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: buddhism, islam, myanmar, religion, religious violence, rohingya

POLICING BY CRISIS

April 18, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my Internation New York Times column on the crisis in British policing, published last month under the title ‘Britain’s Bobbies in the Dock’. I also wrote a subsequent post on the framing of Winston Silcott. In March, Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced a public inquiry into claims that the Metropolitan Police had spied on a black family even as the force was supposed to be investigating the racist killing of the family’s eldest […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties • Tags: britain, irish struggle, lord denning, miscarriage of justice, police, police racism, racism, stephen lawrence, winston silcott

CAST OUT BEYOND THE EMBRACE OF THE LAW

April 15, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In January, the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, introduced a last-minute measure to the government’s Immigration Bill that would enable her to remove the citizenship of any terror suspects whose conduct is ‘seriously prejudicial to the interests of the UK’, even if to do so made them stateless. It is, May insisted, a necessary measure in the war on terror. An article in the New York Times last week highlighted the way that even without the new law, Britain already […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: britain, citizenship, immigration, totalitarianism, war on terror

CONFORMING, NOT TRANSFORMING

April 9, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Last week, Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the technology company that, among other things, is responsible for the Firefox browser, resigned after it was revealed that in 2008 he had given a $1000 donation to Proposition 8, the Californian campaign against gay marriage. Mozilla decided that his views were incompatible with its core values of ‘diversity and inclusiveness’. This week Brandeis University in America withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the campaigner against female […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: ayaan hirsi ali, free speech, gay marriage, homophobia, islam, islamism, islamophobia, judith butler, maajid nawaz, racism, tariq ramadan, wendy doniger

NO SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT FREE SPEECH

April 3, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Fredrik deBoer, who teaches at Purdue University in Indiana, recently wrote on his blog a passionate polemic about the way that what he calls the ‘social justice left’ has abandoned the struggle for free speech, and indeed take up the struggle for censorship. Since much of his argument resonates with many of the themes I have pursued on Pandaemonium, I thought it would be useful to repost it here. There was an interesting discussion and a follow-up post, too, both worth reading. […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: free speech, left

CREATING THE BEAST OF BROADWATER FARM

March 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In the Old Bailey in London there is currently a trial that carries with it the aftershocks of the social fractures, institutional injustices and corrupt policing of the 1980s. Nicholas Jacobs is in the dock accused of murdering policeman PC Keith Blakelock, killed during the Broadwater Farm riot of October 1985. Much has been written during Jacobs’ trial about the agony of the Blackelock family in having to wait three decades for possible justice. Almost entirely ignored has been the […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, broadwater farm, police racism, racism, riots, winston silcott

BRITAIN’S BOBBIES IN THE DOCK

March 18, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times, on the crisis surrounding Britain’s police. Earlier this month, Theresa May, Britain’s home secretary, announced a public inquiry into reports that the Metropolitan Police had spied on a black family, even as the force was supposed to be investigating the racist killing of the family’s eldest son. Mrs. May called the revelations ‘profoundly shocking’ and said that ‘policing stands damaged today’. The story goes back to 1993, when Stephen Lawrence, a […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: britain, british politics, police, stephen lawrence

HULLABALOO OVER THE SATANIC VERSES

February 18, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my essay on the changing landscape of free speech in the 25 years since the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, here is ‘Hullabaloo over Satanic Verses’, a Channel 4 documentary first broadcast in 1989 on the night of the fatwa. It was made by the writer and documentary film maker Gita Sahgal, one of the great stalwarths of the struggle against racism and for free speech and women’s rights. She was a founder of the Southall Black Sisters and […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: gita sahgal, islamism, liberalism, liberties, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

IN THE SHADOW OF THE FATWA

February 14, 2014 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 ancient […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: free speech, From Fatwa to Jihad, identity politics, liberalism, milton, peter mayer, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses, wendy denier

ANGELS AND DEVILS, MYTHS AND MONSTERS

February 1, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was recently interviewed by Faculti, a superb website that publishes videos of authors and academics talking about their work. I discussed my book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. Here are the two recordings from the Faculti interview. The first is a reading from the final section of From Fatwa to Jihad in which I argue that The Satanic Verses is not as most people imagine it to be; Salman Rushdie’s novel is not a critique […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Kenan Malik • Tags: From Fatwa to Jihad, kenan malik's books, rushdie affair, salma, the satanic verses

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIGHT TO OFFEND

January 29, 2014 by Kenan Malik

‘Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch’. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about the Jesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for tweeting one of the cartoons, not finding them offensive. Channel 4 decided that they were offensive and could not be shown. It would have been […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, islam, jesus and mo, liberalism, liberties, maajid nawaz, offence, religious freedom

DIEUDONNÉ: THE CLOWN OF THE ANTI AGE

January 15, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Let’s be clear: The French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, at the heart of a contemporary storm about anti-Semitism, is a bigot. But the fact that he is a bigot does not mean that all his supporters are, nor that he should be banned. The debate about Dieudonné exposes much of the confusion and blindness that pervades contemporary politics. The latest controversy over the comedian began after the footballer Nicolas Anelka celebrated a goal with the ‘quenelle’, a hand gesture popularised […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Politics • Tags: anti-semitism, bernard-henri levy, dieudonne, france, free speech, racism

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, SECULAR WORLD

January 12, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the debate about segregated public meetings and the meaning of religious freedom. It is published in the INYT under the headline ‘Religious Freedom, Secular Forum’. Should gender segregation be allowed in Muslim public meetings? That question has created a surprising degree of political heat in Britain over recent weeks. The controversy began after a number of hardline Muslim student groups insisted that men and women must sit separately at their […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Justice & Liberties • Tags: islam, islamophobia, religion, religious freedom, secularism

HUMAN RIGHTS AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

December 5, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The Nonhuman Rights Project, an organization founded by Massachusetts lawyer and animal rights activist Steven Wise, has this week filed a series of lawsuits in New York demanding that chimpanzees be granted ‘legal personhood’. The lawsuit seeks to extend the concept of habeas corpus to chimpanzees, drawing an analogy with one of the most famous anti-slavery cases, that of James Somerset in 1772, an American slave who had been taken to London by his owner, escaped, was recaptured and was being held in chains on a […]

Categories: Human, Justice & Liberties • Tags: animal rights, apes, human nature, morality, peter singer, rights