Pandaemonium

OUT NOW!

February 2, 2017 by Kenan Malik

. The new edition of From Fatwa to Jihad, with an Afterword (and a new subtitle) is published today. You can read an extract from the new Preface, and watch two Faculti videos I made about the original edition. You can buy the book from most bookshops, or from Amazon. Patrons of Pandaemonium who contribute more than $5 a month get a free copy. I will be in touch! . ‘Gripping… The Rushdie affair has shaped all our lives. This book […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: british politics, charlie hebdo, free speech, From Fatwa to Jihad, islamism, kenan malik's books, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

THE WONDROUS EYE OF MALICK SIDIBÉ

January 29, 2017 by Kenan Malik

He was blind in one eye through a childhood accident. But what a wondrous eye was the other! It is almost impossible to miss a Malick Sidibé photo. Black and white and suffused with life. Sidibé, who died last year, was born in 1935 or 1936 (he was not sure which) to a peasant family in what was then French Sudan. ‘We knew nothing of the outside world’, he was later to say. ‘We were enclosed in a capsule. It […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Photos • Tags: mali, malick sidibe, photography

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #12

January 26, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The latest collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . When truth becomes a commodity Daniel T Rogers, Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 January 2017 The reorganization of society and the social imagination along market lines, which has accelerated so rapidly, reaches a kind of culmination. But in this reconstitution of truths as market commodities, the invisible hand working to sort things out is […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

LA FRANCE ET L’ANGLETERRE AU BORD DE LA CRISE DE NERFS

January 22, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The French journalist Ilana Navaro has made a superb four-part radio documentary series for France Culture on social policies towards immigration and integration in France and Britain. Entitled La France et L’Angleterre au born de la crise de nerfs (‘France and England on the edge of a nervous breakdown’), the documentary visits a ‘theological cafe’ in Paris and the Cambridge Muslim College, a sharia council in Birmingham, Goutte d’Or, an area in the 18th arrondissement in Paris with a large […]

Categories: International, Multiculturalism • Tags: assimilationism, britain, france, ilana navaro, integration, islam, multiculturalism, sharia

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

January 19, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Here are five poems that won’t be heard at Donald Trump’s inauguration, but perhaps should be. Five poems about America written across the span of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, five poems that seem particularly meaningful now. The first, ‘Let America be America again’, is by Langston Hughes, one of the great figures of twentieth century American literature, and a titan of the Harlem Renaissance, much of whose work was, as it is in this poem, unpicking the […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: america, claude mckay, james baldwin, january gill o'neill, langston hughes, michelle boisseau, poetry

IN TRISTRAM HUNT’S FUTURE FIEFDOM

January 15, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Tristram Hunt, historian and MP for Stoke on Trent, this week resigned his parliamentary seat to take up a new post as Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The V&A is one of the most infuriating museums in London – a stunning collection, some superb exhibitions, but too often imbued with a desire seemingly to be more indulgent than inspiring or insightful. If I was unkind I might suggest that that is a good description also of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Photos • Tags: india, islamic art, mughal india, museums, photos, renaissance, tristram hunt, victoria and albert museum

FAKE NEWS AND WORSE SOLUTIONS

January 11, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on fake news. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline ‘All the Fake News That Was Fit to Print’. In 1920, the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper owned by the industrialist Henry Ford, published a series of articles about a global Jewish conspiracy based on […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: donald trump, facebook, fake news, fbi, hillsborough disaster, iraq war, j edgar hoover, journalism, martin luther king, post-truth, protocols of the elders of zion, social media, zinoviev letter

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #11

January 8, 2017 by Kenan Malik

My latest collection, and the first for 2017, of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . What the alt-right is really about Angela Nagle, Irish Times, 6 January 2017 Spencer is in the strict dictionary definition of the term, a racist. He claims “race is something between a breed and an actual species” and believes non-white Americans should leave in a ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’. He […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

A CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY OR OF LIBERALISM?

January 4, 2017 by Kenan Malik

I reworked my essay ‘From the End of History to 2016’ for Sunday’s Observer, developing the theme of the tension between liberalism and democracy, and of the distinction between the ‘politics of solidarity’ and of the ‘politics of identity’. It was published in the Observer under the headline ‘Liberalism is suffering but democracy is doing just fine’, and was slightly edited down from this original version. Welcome to 2017. It will be just like 2016. Only more so. This will be […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: brexit, democracy, donald trump, far right, front national, geert wilders, identity politics, left, liberalism, marine le pen, populism, solidarity, working class

A YEAR OF PANDAEMONIUM

January 1, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Happy New Year! It has been a tumultuous year, and the discussions on Pandaemonium have reflected that tumult, trying to get to grips with issues from Brexit to cultural appropriation, from anti-Semitism to the migrant crisis. Here are some of the highlights of a year of Pandaemonium in 2016. And best wishes to all for 2017. . Populism, Brexit and Trump It is the issue that has dominated much of the political debate this year. In my end of year […]

Categories: Pandaemonium • Tags: pandaemonium

FROM THE END OF HISTORY TO 2016

December 29, 2016 by Kenan Malik

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York . ‘What we may be witnessing is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.’ So wrote Francis Fukuyama in his seminal 1989 essay ‘The End of History?’. ‘With the fall of the Soviet Union’, Fukuyama continued, ‘The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: 2016, end of history, francis fukuyama, identity politics, left, managerialism, populism, working class

MERRY CHRISTMAS – AND THANK YOU!

December 25, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Merry Christmas to all my readers – and thank you for all your support this year. It has been a tumultuous year and many of the debates on Pandaemonium have reflected that tumult. I will publish an essay later this week to try to place the events of 2016 in perspective, and another to record a year of Pandaemonium. I want especially to thank my Patrons. Patreon, for those who don’t know, is a crowdfunding platform for funding the work […]

Categories: Pandaemonium • Tags: pandaemonium, patreon

BOOKS TO ARGUE WITH, BOOKS TO WONDER AT

December 22, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Some books are there to enjoy. Some to wonder at. And some to argue with. So, a handful of books from next year that are already on my wish list, some simply to curl up and read, and some definitely to argue with. But the book I’m most looking forward to in 2017 is not in the list… The new edition of From Fatwa to Jihad, with a new subtitle (‘How the World Changed from The Satanic Verses to Charlie […]

Categories: Culture & Books

THE PROBLEM IS MORE THAN INTEGRATION

December 18, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A shorter version of this article was published in Al Jazeera English. ‘Drawing on what we have seen and heard during the review, we suggest integration is the extent to which people from all backgrounds can get on.’ So suggests the Casey Review, the latest British government study of the problems of immigration and integration. Last year civil servant Louise Casey was asked by the then prime minister David Cameron ‘to consider what could be done to boost opportunity and integration in […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, casey report, casey review, immigration, integration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, social cohesion, working class

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #10

December 15, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Stop calling everything ‘fake news’ Will Oremus, Slate, 6 December 2016 As the term has entered the national discourse, it has turned out to be a handy cudgel for people who want to criticize the media for a wide range of failings. First, some in the liberal and mainstream media began to carelessly blur […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

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