Pandaemonium

THE PROBLEM IS NOT IMMIGRATION. IT’S THE OBSESSION WITH IT.

April 20, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In 2004, David Goodhart wrote an essay called ‘Too Diverse?’ in Prospect magazine, of which he was then editor. Liberals, he suggested, had to face up to a ‘progressive dilemma’. Too much immigration undermined social solidarity, particularly in a welfare state. We had to choose between the two. The essay caused considerable controversy, but became a key point of reference for many communitarian thinkers, both Labour and Conservative. Goodhart, now director of the centre-left think tank Demos, has developed that essay […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, david goodhart, immigration, labour party, multiculturalism, race, racism

ON MACHIAVELLI

April 17, 2013 by Kenan Malik

My book on the history of moral thought is written. In the process, I had to reduced the ms by some 30,000 words. Much of that is better off left on the cutting room floor. But there are also some portions coherent enough to be worth reading. So, I am running an occasional series publishing some of the more cogent sections that are no longer in the book. This first of the ‘missing pages’ is on Machiavelli. ‘A prince never […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: history of ideas, history of moral thought, machiavelli, morality

DING DONG! WHEN PROTEST SONGS WEREN’T DEAD

April 14, 2013 by Kenan Malik

So, those who despise Margaret Thatcher for her vindictiveness and spitefulness want to celebrate her death by propelling into the charts a song about the death of a witch. Those who laud Thatcher for her supposed love of freedom want to ban that song. And the BBC settles on a cackhanded ‘compromise’ by censorsing the song while pretending it is doing no such thing. Nothing, perhaps, could better express the inanity of contemporary politics than the crass, puerile controversy around […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books • Tags: british politics, margaret thatcher, music, protest songs, protests, thatcherism

FROM THE VAULTS: DISSECTING JOHN GRAY’S ANATOMY

April 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away this week, I am republishing some old material that has not previously appeared on Pandaemonium. This is a review of Gray’s Anatomy, a selection of writing from the philosopher John Gray, It was first published in the Times in April 2009. On the eve of the Iraq war, John Gray published an essay in the New Statesman entitled ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing Torturers in Liberal Democracy from Being Abused, and for Recognizing their Benefit to the Public (with Apologies […]

Categories: Human • Tags: freedom struggles, human nature, john gray, liberalism, progress, utopianism

FROM THE VAULTS: A DEBATE ON ‘WHO SPEAKS FOR ME?’

April 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for a week, so I thought I would unearth some more old material from the vaults, this time debates in which I have been involved. This first is an exchange of letters with the human rights activist Tanuka Loha, currently the Human Right to Housing Program Director at America’s National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, on questions of race, identity and political representation. It is a debate that touches on many of the themes in the contemporary discussion […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, black, black identity, british politics, democracy, mult, muslims, racism, universalism

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

THE FACTS, THE MYTHS AND THE FRAMING OF IMMIGRATION

March 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

At the heart of the current debate about immigration are two issues: the first is about the facts of immigration, the second about public perception of immigration. The facts are relatively straightforward. Immigration is a good and the idea that immigrants come to Britain to live off benefits laughable. Immigrants put more money into the economy than they take out and have negligible impact on jobs or wages. An independent report on the impact of immigration commissioned by the Home Office […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-semitism, british politics, david goodhart, immigration, muslims, racism

‘MY WEAPON IS LITERATURE’

March 24, 2013 by Kenan Malik

‘Imaginative literature’, Chinua Achebe wrote at the end of his essay The Truth of Fiction, ‘does not enslave; it liberates the mind of man. Its truth is not like the canons of orthodoxy or the irrationality of prejudice and superstition. It begins as an adventure in self-discovery and ends in wisdom and humane conscience.’ Achebe, who died on Friday, has often been called the greatest African novelist. He was, of course, a great novelist, full stop; one of the towering figures of […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: african literature, chinua achebe

FREE SPEECH AND CULTURAL SENSITIVITIES: A DEBATE

March 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I have just taken part in an exchange of letters with Nada Shabout, director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, which focused on the question: ‘Should religious or cultural sensibilities ever limit free speech?’ These first four letters are published in the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine. There was no room to take the debate further in print, but we are continuing the discussion. The new exchanges will be published […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, debates, free speech, islam, islamophobia, offence, racism, religion, religious freedom, rushdie affair

I’M HACKED OFF

March 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am hacked off by politicians who think that a last-minute backroom deal is the proper way to resolve a critical political issue. Who think that a shabby compromise between two bad proposals makes a good proposal. Who imagine that imposing exemplary damages on those who refuse to sign up to a regulatory quango creates a freer press. I’m hacked off by campaigners who have so little respect for free speech that they are happy to use legislation to reform […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free press, free speech, leveson inquiry

FROM THE VAULTS: ISLAM, IMMIGRATION AND INVASION

March 13, 2013 by Kenan Malik

My book on the history of moral thought is all but complete (yay!). Hopefully, blogging will be back to normal next week. In the meantime, here is another old book review plucked from the vaults, this one of Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on a Revolution in Europe. It was first published in New Humanist in July 2009. For more discussion of the myths about immigration, multiculturalism and Islam, see my Milton K Wong lecture, which is in two parts. In his classic […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: christopher caldwell, humanism, immigration, islamism, islamophobia, racism

FROM THE VAULTS: ON TARIQ RAMADAN’S MEANING

March 10, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am still closeted away, finishing my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought. So, here is another of my old book reviews, this one on Tariq Ramadan’s The Quest for Meaning. It was first published in the Independent in August 2010. In an age in which public intellectuals are often highly divisive figures – think of the storms surrounding Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins or Bernard-Henri Lévy – few generate more controversy than Tariq Ramadan. Political activist, Muslim scholar, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: humanism, islam, religion, tariq ramadan

FROM THE VAULTS: CLR JAMES AND THE BLACK JACOBINS

March 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I continue my life in purdah, trying to complete my book, here is the second book review drawn from the vaults. The review is of CLR James’ The Black Jacobins; it was originally published in August 2010 on Norman Geras’ normblog, as part of his Writer’s Choice series. The poet and statesman Aimé Césaire once wrote of Haiti that it was here that the colonial knot was first tied. It was also in Haiti, Césaire added, that the knot […]

Categories: History • Tags: anti-imperialism, clr james, enlightenment, haitian revolution, toussaint l'ouverture, universalism

FROM THE VAULTS: DARKNESS IN ANTHROPOLOGY

March 4, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am in the death-throes of finishing a book, so have little time to tend Pandaemonium. Rather than abandon it, however, I thought I would raid the vaults, as it were, for old material that I have not published here. Given that it is book-writing that is keeping me away from blog-writing, it seemed only appropriate that I republish some old book reviews. And given thecurrent controversy over Napoleon Chagnon, both over his new book Noble Savages, and his election […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, derek freeman, margaret mead, napoleon chagnon, racial science, scientific bias, sociobiology, yanomamo

SPLIT BRAIN, SPLIT VIEWS – DEBATING IAIN MCGILCHRIST

February 24, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Iain McGilchrist has written a response to my post about his book The Master and his Emissary and about the RSA workshop that discussed it. Since it is a long reply, Iain asked me whether I could publish it as a post, rather than as a comment, which I am happy to do. I have appended my own response at the end. (And just to avoid any confusion, while I have set up the discussion in the form of two open […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: debates, human agency, iain mcgilchrist, neuroscience, ray tallis, reason