Category Archives: Kenan Malik

OF ANGELS AND DEVILS, OF MONSTERS AND MYTHS

February 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A new edition of my book From Fatwa to Jihad will be published next year, for which I am writing an Afterword to bring the story up to date. So, it seemed a good time to repost two videos I made about the current book for Faculti, a website that publishes videos of authors and academics talking about their work. The first film is a reading from the final section of From Fatwa to Jihad, the second an exploration of the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: free speech, islam, islamism, kenan malik's books, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

COMING SOON (WELL, NEXT YEAR…)

February 26, 2016 by Kenan Malik

It is seven years since From Fatwa to Jihad was first published. The themes at the heart of the book – Islam, multiculturalism, free speech – are even more relevant now than they were in 2009. And in those seven years much has happened – from the emergence of IS to the ‘no platform’ debates, from the Charlie Hebdo killings to the migration crisis – that has pushed the debate on. So, next year there will be a new edition […]

Categories: Kenan Malik • Tags: free speech, islam, kenan malik's books, multiculturalism, racism, rushdie affair

ON THE QUEST FOR A MORAL COMPASS

January 25, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the text of my talk at the Galle Literary Festival Last week. What can the history of morality tell us about the nature of morality? And about ourselves as human beings? These are the questions at the heart of what I want to explore today. For some, the questions themselves might seem absurd. There is a widespread perception of morality as occupying a sphere of its own. We imagine that morality can, and should, be understood in its […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-imperialism, chinese philosophy, christianity, enlightenment, ethics, europe, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, human agency, human nature, imperialism, modernity, monotheism, nietzsche, plato, radical enlightenment, thrasymachus, viktor frankl

TALKING ALL OVER THE WORLD

August 2, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Not quite a world tour, I know (I can fantasise can’t I?), but this is probably the closest I will ever get to one. Over the next few months I am giving talks in places as distant as Ann Arbor and Lahore, Sweden and South Africa. Here’s a round up of my talks; do come along if you are able. . 7 August 2015 The state of free expression after Charlie Hebdo Wilderness Festival Cornbury Park Oxfordshire, UK 17.00 A […]

Categories: Kenan Malik • Tags: talks

MARX AND MORALITY

April 26, 2015 by Kenan Malik

To accompany the newly-published paperback edition of The Quest for a Moral Compass, I am running a series of extracts from the book. Previous extracts were on Joshua Greene’s idea of two modes of moral thinking and on whether universalism is merely a form of Western particularism. This extract, from Chapter 13, ‘The challenge of history’, examines Marx’s claim to be a moral thinker. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: anti-capitalism, capitalism, communism, hegel, history of moral thought, left, marx, marxism, morality, working class

HISTORY, MORALITY AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

April 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition. I am publishing a number of extracts from the book. This extract, from Chapter 19, ‘Confucianism, Communism and the Clash of Civilizations’, sets out many of the themes of the book against the background of the changing balance of power between China and the West. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, clash of civilizations, confucianism, herder, history of moral thought, jiang qing, martin jacques, morality, romanticism, samuel huntington, universalism, west

THE MORAL CAMERA

April 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition, I will be, over the next few weeks, running extracts from the book. This first extract is from Chapter 18, ‘The search for ethical concrete’, and looks at neuroscientist Joshua Greene‘s idea of morality as existing in two modes – automatic and manual. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From The […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: history of moral thought, joshua greene, kantianism, morality, peter singer, trolley problem, utilitarianism

OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK!

April 2, 2015 by Kenan Malik

. The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback! You can read reviews of the book. And you can buy it from most bookshops, from Amazon or via my Pandaemonium bookstore. The US version of the paperback will be published later this year. . ‘This is intellectual history in the grand manner, in the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, written with the same clarity, accessibility and narrative verve as the master himself…We are all […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ethics, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books

TOP QUARK!

March 23, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My essay Assimilationism vs Multiculturalism has won the 3 Quarks Daily Politics and Social Science Prize for 2015. My thanks to 3 Quarks Daily (which, if you don’t know already, is a superb web-based magazine/portal) and to Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch, who judged the competition. The other winning essays were Xavier Marquez’s The Saudi Monarchy as a Family Firm and Omar Ali’s Blasphemy, blasphemy laws, Pakistan, Charlie Hebdo… And the full list of the other finalists: Misha Leptic, Notes of a Grand Juror (3 Quarks […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE

March 7, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Israeli elections are coming up. The British elections are coming up. But before all that there’s a different kind of vote: for the annual 3 Quarks Daily Politics and Social Science blogging award. For those who don’t know, 3 Quarks Daily is a wonderful web-based magazine/portal which annually hosts an award for the best online writing on politics and social science. There are this year 29 nominees, one of which is my essay ‘Assimilationism vs multiculturalism’. 3QD readers get to […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium • Tags: 3 quarks daily, competitions

FIVE TALES OF GOOD AND EVIL

March 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Today being World Book Day, I am publishing five extracts from my book The Quest for a Moral Compass, that explore five books from the ancient and medieval worlds, some well-known, some almost forgotten, but all of which have helped shape our thinking about right and wrong, good and evil – Homer’s Iliad, a foundation stone of Ancient Greek culture; the Mahabharata, the first of the two great epics of Hinduism; Mozi, the only work we have of ancient China’s […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: book of job, chinese philosophy, christianity, greek philosophy, hay ibn yaqzan, history of moral thought, homer, ibn tuff, iliad, islamic philosophy, judaism, mahabharata, mo tzu, morality

RIGHT AND WRONG IN THE MODERN WORLD

December 25, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Better than a sermon on Xmas day… a discussion of the history of morality, and of the state of contemporary moral thinking, with Philip Petit and Natasha Circa on Australia’s ABC Radio. http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2014/12/sea_20141220.mp3 For more discussions on morality see my talks on ‘Where do values come from’ at London’s RSA and ‘Without a moral safety net’ at the Glasgow Aye Write Festival. Or just get my book, The Quest for a Moral Compass. The image is a […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: greek philosophy, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, modernity, morality, religion

REVIEWING THE QUEST

December 2, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a round-up of the latest reviews of The Quest for a Moral Compass. On my Books page are all the reviews so far. You can buy the book from the Pandaemonium bookshop in Britain and the USA. Jonathan Israel New Humanist, Winter 2014 There could be no more daunting intellectual task than setting out to write a history of moral thought from the ancient Greeks until now. Yet there is no neater way of combining philosophy, religion, intellectual […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: christianity, enlightenment, history of moral thought, islam, jonathan israel, kenan malik's books, marxism, morality, radical enlightenment, religion

TALKING MORALITY

November 24, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was a guest last week on Neil Denny’s Little Atoms show on Resonance FM, talking about the history of morality. Also on the show was Rebecca Goldstein, author of the wonderful Plato at the Googleplex, discussing Plato and his relevance. Unfortunately the two interviews were recorded separately, so we were not able to discuss issues on air. Nevertheless it was an honour to find myself on the same show. I have also uploaded here videos of a couple of […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: death of god, history of moral thought, morality, talks

LIFE, IDENTITY, MORALITY, GOD AND EVERYTHING…

October 13, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was a guest this weekend on Richard Holloway’s Sunday Morning show on Radio Scotland talking about life, childhood, racism, identity, morality, religion, politics, multiculturalism, the Rushdie affair, the Euthyphro dilemma… The full version is available on iPlayer – but only for the next 4 weeks (the conversation starts about 8.30 mins in). If you have missed that 4-week cut off, or cannot access the iPlayer for any reason, here is an extended extract embedded as an AudioBoom track (the third section of the […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: broadcasts, From Fatwa to Jihad, interviews, left, morality, multiculturalism, racism, religion, richard holloway, rushdie affair, the quest for a moral compass