Category Archives: Justice & Liberties

WHEN DOES CRITICISM OF ISLAM BECOME ISLAMOPHOBIA?

November 14, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am taking part on Friday in a discussion entitled ‘When does criticism of Islam become Islamophobia?’, hosted by Oxash, the Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists. So, I thought it might be worth setting out the basic points that undergird my own thinking about the relationship between criticism, Islam and Islamophobia. . 1 Islamophobia is a problematic term. This is not because hatred of, or discrimination against, Muslims does not exist. Clearly it does. Islamophobia is a problematic term because […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: clash of civilizations, free speech, islam, islamophobia, racism

A TRIBAL VIEW OF PRESS FREEDOM

November 8, 2013 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the debate about press regulation in Britain. It is published in the INYT under the headline ‘Britain Needs a First Amendment’. Here are the opening paragraphs and a link through to the INYT essay. Last month two figures at the heart of Britain’s political and journalistic establishment went on trial. Rebekah Brooks is the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and a close friend of Prime Minister […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech, Politics • Tags: british politics, edward snowden, first, free press, free speech, leveson inquiry

CARTOON VIEW OF THE AUTHENTIC MUSLIM

October 23, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for the next week, so I am publishing some old material that has not previously appeared on Pandaemonium. Kåre Bluitgen’s book The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Mohammed has just been published in English. Back in 2005, it was Bluitgen’s failure to find artists willing to drawn pictures of Mohammad for his book that eventually led to the Danish cartoon crisis. So, here is an edited extract from my 2009 book From Fatwa to Jihad that tells […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, free speech, islam, islamism, kenan malik's books, liberties, muslims, rushdie affair

BEYOND THE VEIL

September 22, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The question of the Muslim veil seems never to leave the headlines for long. If the debate is not about whether states, such as France or Belgium, should have the right to ban the face veil in public, it is about what limits there should be to the wearing of the burqa or niqab in those countries, such as Britain or Germany, that do not ban it. The latest controversies have erupted in Britain after a defendant in a criminal trial […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Justice & Liberties • Tags: bernard-henri levy, burqa bans, civil society, law, liberalism, liberties, multiculturalism, religious freedom, secularism, women's rights

ON THE RELIGIOUS & CULTURAL LIMITS TO FREE SPEECH

August 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this year I took part in an exchange of letters with Nada Shabout, director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, which focused on the question: ‘Should religious or cultural sensibilities ever limit free speech?’ The first four letters were published in Index on Censorship magazine which had organized the debate. There was no space to take the debate further in print, but we agreed to continue the discussion, with the new […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, debates, free speech, islam, islamophobia, offence, racism, religion, religious freedom, rushdie affair

TYRANNY IS ALWAYS TYRANNY, WHOEVER MAY BE THE TARGET

August 1, 2013 by Kenan Malik

When, on 3 July, the Egyptian army ousted President Mohammed Morsi, and took control of the nation, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as a coup but as the military acting on behalf of the people to protect the revolution. When the army imprisoned Morsi, and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, censored its media and suspended the constitution, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as an authoritarian crackdown but as measures necessary to check the ambitions of the Brotherhood and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: arab spring, arab world, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, muslim brotherhood, tony blair, western policy

ISLAM AND FREE SPEECH: AN OLD DEBATE

July 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

A 2006 debate, in fact, between myself and Imran Khan (the lawyer not the cricketer) on the issue of Islam, free speech and the Danish cartoons for a special Channel 4 Dispatches programme. I had not realized that the broadcast was available on YouTube. The issues we debated remain strikingly relevant. Perhaps the most telling moment came when the moderator Jon Snow announced an audience poll to see whether the cartoons should be shown on the programme. The audience overwhelmingly […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: broadcasts, danish cartoons, debates, free speech, islam, offence

STORIES PLUCKED FROM THE WORLDS IN-BETWEEN

July 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the foreword I have written for a new collection of essays on Salman Rushdie’s writing. Edited by Robert Eaglestone and Martin McQuillan, Salman Rushdie is part of Bloomsbury’s Contemporary Critical Perspectives series. When he was a child, Salman Rushdie recalls in his memoir Joseph Anton, his 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 […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: britain, free speech, rushdie affair, salman rushdie

AN ESSAY ON THOMAS PAINE (JUST A LITTLE BIT CENSORED)

June 24, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In my talk on pluralism and the giving of offence, I mentioned my 1994 essay on Thomas Paine that had been censored by the Independent because I opened it with a quote from The Satanic Verses. Here is that essay, in the form in which it was finally published. And this is the quote from The Satanic Verses that was felt to be too offensive. It describes the moment that Salman, the scribe who writes down the revelations that Mahound receives from […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: christianity, edmund burke, enlightenment, free speech, offence, religion, rushdie affair, the satanic verses, tom paine

THE PLEASURES OF PLURALISM, THE PAIN OF OFFENCE

June 17, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I gave two talks this weekend. One was on ‘Turning diversity on its head’ at the sixth anniversary celebration of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), the other on’Offence and censorship’ at an Artangel ‘Party for Freedom’. The two talks overlapped, so here I have stitched them together into a single post. The cartoons are from the wonderful Jesus and Mo. Almost twenty years ago, in 1994, the Independent newspaper asked me to write an essay on Tom Paine, the eighteenth-century […]

Categories: Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, diversity, free speech, multiculturalism, offence, rushdie affair, tom paine

FREE SPEECH AND CULTURAL SENSITIVITIES: A DEBATE

March 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I have just taken part in an exchange of letters with Nada Shabout, director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, which focused on the question: ‘Should religious or cultural sensibilities ever limit free speech?’ These first four letters are published in the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine. There was no room to take the debate further in print, but we are continuing the discussion. The new exchanges will be published […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, debates, free speech, islam, islamophobia, offence, racism, religion, religious freedom, rushdie affair

I’M HACKED OFF

March 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am hacked off by politicians who think that a last-minute backroom deal is the proper way to resolve a critical political issue. Who think that a shabby compromise between two bad proposals makes a good proposal. Who imagine that imposing exemplary damages on those who refuse to sign up to a regulatory quango creates a freer press. I’m hacked off by campaigners who have so little respect for free speech that they are happy to use legislation to reform […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free press, free speech, leveson inquiry

DIVERSITY, THE MARKET AND ARTISTIC FREE EXPRESSION

February 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I took part last week in a conference on artistic free expression called ‘Taking the Offensive’ organized by Index on Censorship. It was the culmination of a long project through which Index on Censorship has sought both to raise awareness of threats to artistic free expression and to clarify responses. Back in July 2011 Index on Censorship published, as part of this project, a report, Beyond Belief – Theatre, Freedom of Expression and Public Order. Taking as its starting point the controversies surrounding Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, cultural policy, free speech, gurpreet kaur bhatti, liberties, multiculturalism, rushdie affair, social inclusion, the satanic verses

GERALD SCARFE, ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DANISH CARTOONS

January 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

How should we respond to the controversy over the Gerald Scarfe cartoon? Last Sunday – Holocaust Memorial Day – the Sunday Times published a cartoon by Scarfe, its regular cartoonist, depicting the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with blood-red coloured cement, in which were trapped Palestinians. The cartoon instantly created international outrage. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has complained to the Press Complaints Commission, denounced the cartoon as ‘shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anti-semitism, danish cartoons, free speech, gerald scarce, israel, liberal hypocrisy, offence, racism

ON DEMOCRACY AS A GOOD

January 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

If 2011 brought the promise of democracy to the Arab world, in 2012 democratic change appeared to founder on political reality. In Egypt, democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi has tried to gather into his own hands powers far greater that that held previously by Hosni Mubarak, and is railroading through a constitution that many fear will undermine the gains of the revolution. In Libya and Tunisia Islamist-influenced governments are promoting laws restricting rights, constraining speech, and maintaining social inequality. In […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: arab spring, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, liberties, western policy