Pandaemonium

AFTER BRUSSELS: ONCE AGAIN THINKING THROUGH TERROR

March 23, 2016 by Kenan Malik

‘Solidarity and anger. Those were my immediate emotions’. So I wrote last November after the Paris attacks: ‘Solidarity with the people of Paris, anger at the depraved, nihilistic savagery of the terrorists.’ My emotions are much the same after the savage attacks in Brussels this week. ‘But, beyond solidarity and anger,’, I observed in November, ‘we need also analysis.’ I have written much over the past few years about why conventional views about radicalization and the making of European jihadis […]

Categories: International, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, identity politics, islam, islamism, jihadism, left, migration crisis, muslims, radicalization, terrorism

THE CASE FOR FREEDOM WHERE IT IS MOST FRAGILE

March 20, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is an article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on what attitudes to identity and free speech among Sri Lankan audiences can teach those in the West. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) The article was originally published under the headline ‘A Sri Lankan Lesson in Free Speech’. I gave a talk last month at the Galle Literary Festival in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. This […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: free speech, freedom struggles, identity politics, offence, sri lanka

TALKING MIGRATION, MUSLIMS AND MORALITY

March 17, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I recently gave an interview to Bread and Roses, the TV magazine hosted by Maryam Namazie and Fariborz Pooya, on Europe’s migration crisis, Muslim immigration, the open borders debate and the question of profiling. (The interview begins about 7 minutes in). There were a few errors in what I said, so before anyone else points them out, let me do so myself: The EU-Libya migration deal was concluded in 2010; the new EU-Turkey deal proposes that all irregular migrants crossing from Turkey […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Kenan Malik, Race & Immigration • Tags: european union, immigration, islam, islamism, migrant crisis, muslims, open borders, populism, profiling, racism

ON DUNGENESS BEACH

March 13, 2016 by Kenan Malik

It is not quite as strange as Orford Ness, that desolate and derelict, haunting and wild, edge of the Suffolk coast, of which I have written, and photographed, before. But Dungeness beach, on the edge of Romney Marsh in Kent, is strange enough. The largest shingle beach in Europe, it’s a bleak landscape flanked by the concrete blocks of a nuclear power station, adorned with two lighthouses, dotted with the rotting hulks of fishing boats and fisherman’s huts, punctuated with […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: dungeness, photography

THE BLINDNESS OF EU MIGRATION POLICY

March 9, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A shorter version of this essay was published in Al Jazeera English under the headline ‘The dark side of the EU-Turkey refugee deal’. How do you solve a crisis? By brushing it far enough away from your gaze so you can pretend that it is no longer there. That, at least, appears to be the European Union’s approach. For more than a year, the migration crisis has torn at the heart of the EU, creating deep tensions between members, and […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: european union, greece, migration, refugees, turkey

WHAT MAKES DONALD TRUMP

March 6, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for Al Jazeera English is about the Donald Trump phenomenon. It was published in Al Jazeera under the headline ‘Politics of Disillusionment and the Rise of Donald Trump’. Last autumn, when I was in the USA, I asked a number of senior Republican Party figures about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidential nomination. All laughed out loud. It simply won’t happen, they told me. The Republican Party machine would take care of him. I doubt […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: donald trump, populism, racism, usa

MULTICULTURALISM: THE FINNISH EDITION

March 3, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My book, Multiculturalism and its Discontents, has just been published in Finland by the Eurooppalaisen filosofian seura (Society for European philosophy). I did a short interview with the Society’s journal Niin & Näin to introduce the themes of the book, which I am republishing here. Q: Multiculturalism and its Discontents is a very concise and to-the-point exposé of multiculturalism. What inspired you to publish a book of this kind? KM: Multiculturalism has become one of the most used and abused political terms […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Multiculturalism, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: immigration, kenan malik's books, morality, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

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

LESSONS IN NOT TALKING TO ONESELF

February 22, 2016 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on what attitudes to identity and free speech among Sri Lankan audiences can teach those in the West. It was published under the headline ‘A Sri Lankan Lesson in Free Speech’. The festival provided a space for engagement with a wide variety of ideas in a way that does not often happen in a place like Jaffna. It opened with a discussion of Tamil literature, which has a […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: free speech, identity politics, sri lanka

WHY THE LAHORE LITERARY FESTIVAL?

February 18, 2016 by Kenan Malik

The Lahore Literary Festival opens on Friday. Or perhaps it doesn’t. There has been over the past twenty four hours considerable confusion as to whether the authorities will allow it to go ahead, or for how long. Local papers have been reporting that the Lahore District Coordination Officer had apparently revoked permission for the Festival to be staged. Other reports suggest that it will be a two-day not a three day event. The Festival organizers have tweeted that it may indeed […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: free speech, freedom struggles, lahore literary festival, pakistan

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MY FIRST ARTICLE FOR THE INDEPENDENT

February 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This week the Independent announced that it would cease its print edition next month and will be appear purely in digital form. Dozens of redundancies are expected. The Independent was born in an era of great transformation, political, social, and technological. It came to life just as the postwar order was unraveling; three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and at a time when the old ideological politics were being unpicked, and the meaning of ‘right’ and ‘left’ […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, germany, immigration, migration crisis, nazism, racism, refugees

‘I KNEW I WAS WITNESSING A TERRIBLE EVIL’

February 11, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Today marks 50 years since the South African apartheid government declared District Six, in the heart of Cape Town, a ‘whites only’ area from which all non-whites would be forcibly removed. District Six was one of the most mixed areas in Cape Town, home to freed slaves and immigrants, labourers and artisans. It was a rundown area, overcrowded, many houses without running water or sewage. But District Six was also Cape Town’s cosmopolitan heart, an area in which blacks and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: apartheid, cape town, district six, noor ebrahim, racism, south africa

THE BUDDHAS OF DAMBULLA

February 7, 2016 by Kenan Malik

It is not often that I enter a room and gasp out loud ‘Wow’. But entering the caves of Dambulla, with with their magnificent statues of the Buddha, and their stunning frescos, was definitely one occasion. The second cave in particular, is one of the most spectacular, yet moving, works of art I have seen. The cave temples, near the town of Dambulla in central Sri Lanka, date back to the first century BCE. King Valagamba (also known as Vattagamini Abhaya) […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: buddhism, dambulla, photography, sri lanka

FREE SPEECH AND DOUBLE STANDARDS

February 4, 2016 by Kenan Malik

The Canadian journalist Duncan Pike interviewed me recently for an article he was writing for the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression on the question of free speech and double standards. It centred around the upcoming trial of Anjem Choudary for ‘inviting support’ for the Islamic State. The article is a very good exploration of the problems and dilemmas of free speech double standards. My thanks to Duncan Pike both for interviewing me and for allowing me to republish his article on Pandaemonium. […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anjem choudary, charlie hebdo, douglas murray, free speech, free speech double standards, islamism, liberal hypocrisy, terrorism