Category Archives: War on terror

BRITAIN’S DANGEROUS TRIBALISM

July 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

From ‘Britain’s Dangerous New Tribalism’, my latest column for the International New York Times: This exodus to Syria has led non-Muslims to point an accusing finger at Muslim communities. Last month, the prime minister, David Cameron, condemned those who, though not violent, ‘buy into’ the prejudices of Islamism and ‘quietly condone’ the actions of the Islamic State. A poll published last week found that 56 percent of Britons thought that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy, a figure […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, british politics, identity politics, islam, islamism, multiculturalism, war on terror

THE MAKING OF WANNABE JIHADIS IN THE WEST

March 1, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 1 March 2015, under the headline ‘The search for identity draws jihadis to the horrors of Isis’. First it was Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, three schoolgirls from Tower Hamlets who smuggled themselves to Syria during their half term holiday. Then it was ‘Jihadi John’, the IS executioner who was unmasked by the Washington Post this week as the Kuwaiti-born Londoner Mohammed Emwazi. The stories of the three schoolgirls and of […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, War on terror • Tags: identity politics, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadi john, jihadism, left, radicalisation, western policy

RADICAL ISLAM AND THE RAGE AGAINST MODERNITY

January 28, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article on ‘Radical Islam, Nihilist Rage’ published last month in the New York Times. Faced with a horror such as the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and staff by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as ‘inhuman’ or ‘medieval’. What made the massacre particularly chilling, though, is that it was neither. The killings were all too human and of our time. The Peshawar massacre may have been particularly abhorrent, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, boko haram, frantz fanon, islam, islamic state, islamism, left, pakistan, religion, taliban

RADICAL ISLAM, NIHILIST RAGE

January 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the New York Times is on radical Islam and about what acts such as the massacre of school children in Peshawar by the Taliban tell us about Islam and about radicalism. Here are the opening paragraphs; you can read the full version in the NYT. Faced with a horror like the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and school staff members by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as ‘inhuman’ or ‘medieval’. What made […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, islam, islamism, religion, taliban, western policy

THE MONSTER THAT ISRAEL HELPED CREATE

July 17, 2014 by Kenan Malik

There is a terrible irony in Israel’s current assault on Gaza. More than 200 Palestinians have died in an onslaught supposedly aimed at weakening Hamas and degrading its capacity to fire rockets into Israel. It was Israel itself, however, that helped Hamas to power in Gaza. For more than thirty years,from the 1960s to the 1990s, successive Israeli governments viewed radical Islamism as a useful tool with which to counter the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (of which […]

Categories: International, War on terror • Tags: afghanistan, hamas, israel, muslim brotherhood, palestine, plo, war on terror, western policy

THE MAKING OF A BRITISH JIHADI

June 6, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As a follow-up to my earlier post on ‘Myths of radicalisation’, which questioned the conventional narrative about how some Muslims get drawn to jihadism, here is an extract from my book From Fatwa to Jihad, telling the story of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombings, and of how he became a jihadi. From Fatwa to Jihad, pp 81-83, 98-104, 107-110 In the days following 7/7, thousands of journalists decamped to Beeston, a suburb of Leeds where the […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, asian youth movement, britain, british asians, ed husain, islam, islamism, mohammed sidique khan, mullah boys, terrorism, war on terror

MYTHS OF RADICALISATION

June 2, 2013 by Kenan Malik

How do we stop young Muslims becoming radicalized? That has been the question posed by many politicians, policy makers, analysts and journalists in the aftermath of the killing of Lee Rigby in Woolwich last week. Indeed, it has been the question posed ever since the 7/7 bombings first raised the issue of ‘homegrown’ terrorism. The idea of ‘radicalization’ as the process by which young Muslims get drawn into jihadist circles has become received wisdom within security forces and among politicians, […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, britain, identity politics, islam, islamism, liberties, marc sageman, radicalisation, terrorism, war on terror

REFLECTIONS ON WOOLWICH

May 23, 2013 by Kenan Malik

1 It was a mad, barbarous attack, more akin to a particularly savage form of street violence than to a politically motivated act. What was striking about the incident was not just its depravity but the desire of the murderers for that depravity to be captured on film. This was narcissistic horror, an attempt to create a spectacle, enact a performance, and generate media frenzy. In that it succeeded. We should not provide the act with greater legitimacy by rationalizing […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: britain, islam, islamism, terrorism, war on terror

REASONING ABOUT TERROR

May 2, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, has stirred up controversy with his claim, on Iran’s Press TV, that behind the Boston bombings lay anger about Western foreign policy and its attitudes to Islam: There was such ignorance in the Bush White House about Islam and about the history of so many disputes that exist in the Middle East. People get angry. They lash out. It’s the whole squalid intervention that has disfigured the record of the Western democracies. I […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: chechnya, islam, islamism, olivier roy, terrorism, usa, war on terror

ON THE POETRY OF THE TALIBAN

June 21, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Everything has gone from the world, The world has become empty again. Human animal. Humanity animality. Everything has gone from the world, I don’t see anything now. All that I see is My imagination. They don’t accept us as humans, They don’t accept us as animals either. And, as they would say, Humans have two dimensions. Humanity and animality, We are out of both of them today. So begins Samiullah Khalid Sahak’s poem Humanity. It is a poem about the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, War on terror • Tags: afghanistan, islam, islamism, jihadism, poetry, taliban, war on terror, war poetry

FAREWELL, FIRST AMENDMENT?

April 26, 2012 by Kenan Malik

in 2004, Tarek Mehanna traveled from America to Yemen with a friend. He claims he was searching out schools at which to study classical Islamic law. The US government insists that he was looking for a jihadi training camp. What all agree is that, even if he was looking for jihadis, he never found any. The US authorities accept that Mehanna never joined the jihadi groups he never found, nor ever funded any such groups. He did, however, on returning to the […]

Categories: Free Speech, War on terror • Tags: first amendment, free speech, jihadism, tarek mehanna, war on terror

ANDERS BREIVIK AND THE CULTURE OF DELUSION

April 23, 2012 by Kenan Malik

‘We want to create a European version of al-Qaeda’, the ‘most successful revolutionary movement in the world’. So claimed Anders Behring Breivik at his trial in Oslo last week. In his sick, twisted, paranoid fantasy world, Breivik sees himself as warrior defending Christian Europe against a Muslim invasion. Yet, nothing so resembles Breivik’s mindset as that of an Islamist jihadist. Not just because Breivik admires the organizational ability of al-Qaeda, but because both Breivik and jihadists draw upon the same […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, War on terror • Tags: anders breivik, christian europe, christopher caldwell, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, diversity, eurabia, islam, islamism, islamophobia, jihadism, mark steyn, melanie phillips, multiculturalism, sam harris, samuel huntington, tzvetan todorov

TO RENDITION JUSTICE

February 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

By next Monday William Hague and Phillip Hammond could be behind bars. In December, the Court of Appeal ruled that the foreign and defence secretaries had by February 20th to produce before the court a Pakistani rice merchant, Yunus Rahmatullah; if they did not, then the court would ‘be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ’. Hague and Hammond will not, of course, be sent down. But the Rahmatullah case does reveal, yet […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-terror laws, barack obama, britain, guantanamo bay, liberal hypocrisy, liberties, rendition, usa, war on terror

AMERICA IS NOT BOTSWANA

January 27, 2012 by Kenan Malik

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, was charged this week with espionage for disclosing to journalists classified information about the capture and torture of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaeda member. Before Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, just three Americans had ever been prosecuted by their government for espionage for leaking stories to journalists. Kiriakou Is the sixth person to face such charges under Obama. In less than four years under Obama, in other words, twice as many people […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: barack obama, free speech, liberties, rendition, usa, war on terror

THE TERRORISTS THAT ARE AND THE TERRORISTS THAT AREN’T

January 16, 2012 by Kenan Malik

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When, apparently, he is ‘our’ terrorist. Last week Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a professor at Tehran’s technical university, and deputy director of commerce at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was blown up by a bomb attached to his car. He was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist to be killed in the past two years, part of what appears to be a concerted assassination campaign against people deemed key to Teheran’s nuclear ambitions. It is […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: britain, iran, israel, libya, rendition, terrorism, war on terror, western policy