Multiculturalism | Pandaemonium

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH MULTICULTURALISM?

October 16, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my talk about multiculturalism that I gave to the Secularism 2014 conference in London last week. For a more detailed discussion of multiculturalism, see my Milton K Wong lecture ‘What is wrong with multiculturalism?’ or my extended essay Multiculturalism and its Discontents. Before we can discuss multiculturalism, we need to distinguish between two processes or phenomena that all too often get confused. On the one hand, the lived experience of diversity; and, on the other, […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: anti-racism, cultural diversity, equality, identity politics, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

FROM THE ARCHIVES: BETWEEN CAMPS

August 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Continuing to plunder the archives while I am away, this is the third in my series of old book reviews on the theme of race, identity and difference. It is a review of Paul Gilroy’s Between Camps and Yasmin Alibhai Brown’s Who Do We Think We Are?, first published in the Independent on Sunday, 11 June 2000. . Review of Paul Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Culture and the Allure of Race (Allen Lane, 2000) and Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Who Do […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: black identity, britishness, diaspora, englishness, frantz fanon, humanism, identity politics, paul gilroy, racism, yasmin alibhai brown

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ILLUSIONS OF IDENTITY

August 18, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, I am plundering the archives. This is the second in a series of old book reviews on the themes of race, difference and identity material that I have not previously published on Pandaemonium. This is an interview with Amartya Sen, and a review of his book Identity and Violence, first published in Prospect, August 2006. . Review of Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusions of Destiny (Allen Lane, 2006) Just […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Multiculturalism • Tags: amartya sen, british politics, identity politics, islam, multiculturalism

UNPACKING A TROJAN HORSE

June 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is about the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal in Britain. Here are the opening paragraphs; the full version is in the INYT, where it was published under the headline ‘Education should be beyond belief’. Last year, the council in Birmingham, Britain’s second city, received an anonymous document that supposedly advised militant Muslims on how to take over the governing bodies of state-run schools and impose Islamist values on them. Since the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: britain, education, faith schools, islam, islamism, religion

…BUT AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM

November 28, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week, I posted an essay ‘In defence of diversity’. But if I am in favour of diversity, I am most certainly critical of multiculturalism. I have long argued that while we should value diversity as a form of lived experience, we should scorn multiculturalism as a political policy. So, as a complement to my defence of diversity, here are extracts from a series of essays and talks from over the years which sum up my critique of multicuturalism. […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, british asians, british politics, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, david goodhart, edmund burke, free speech, immigration, integration, multiculturalism, muslims, rushdie affair

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

MULTICULTURALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS

April 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

My big book – on the history of moral thought – will be published by Atlantic next spring. Before that comes a little book. Multiculturalism and its Discontents is an extended essay that pulls together much of my thinking and writing over the years on the subject. It will be published by Seagull this summer (Amazon says June, though it is more likely to be August). And here is the introduction. On 22 July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik planted a car bomb outside government […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Multiculturalism • Tags: anders breivik, far right, immigration, kenan malik's books, melanie phillips, multiculturalism, racism

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

MULTICULTURALISM: THE INTERVIEW

January 10, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I recently gave an interview for the Open University course on ‘Why is religion controversial?’. The interview is actually not about religion but about multiculturalism. It is somewhat oddly edited in places (a number of times, for instance, part of the answer to one question interpolated into the answer to another in a way that seems confusing), but still, I hope, it makes sense. Here anyway is the interview. Check out also my Milton K Wong lecture that I gave in Vancouver last […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: multiculturalism, talks