Pandaemonium

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

NO OFFENCE

January 12, 2012 by Kenan Malik

As students at University College London prove that there is nothing about which someone can’t find something to take offence, Jesus and Mo show how to create a world that might suit our oh-so-sensitive souls:

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, jesus and mo, muslims

ON HUMAN DIGNITY, EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS AND THE SHAME OF GREENPEACE

January 5, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Last October I wrote an essay about the decision of the European Court of Justice to deny a patent to the German neuroscientist Oliver Brüstle who had developed a method for turning human embryonic stem cells into neurons which could then be transplanted into patients with diseases such as Parkinson’s. The Court had decided that no patent could be valid on a process that involved the destruction of an embryo; such a patent was subversive of ‘human dignity’ and hence ‘immoral’ and contrary […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: biotechnology, embryo research, greenpeace, law, morality

CHEWING OVER THE OLD YEAR, SPITTING OUT THE NEW

January 2, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Perhaps not since 1989 have we witnessed a year as momentous as the last one. From the occupation of Tahrir Square to the mass protests in Moscow, from the Euro crisis to the calamity of the Japanese tsunami, from the London riots to the Libyan conflict, from the killing of Osama bin Laden to the death of Vaclav Havel, there was constant ferment throughout 2011. But how will the events of 2011 shape those of 2012? Four thoughts: 1 Most […]

Categories: Economy, International, Politics • Tags: arab spring, barack obama, capitalism, democracy, economic crisis, euro crisis, european union, french elections, nicolas sarkozy, occupy movement, russia, russian elections, us elections, vladimir putin

DECEMBER MOON

December 30, 2011 by Kenan Malik

A full moon, a clear sky, a night with a camera. These photos were taken earlier this month, as ever on Blythe Hill Fields in South London. There are earlier series on Blythe Hill all fogged up and falling into darkness. Check out also my photoblog another lonely pixel, from which some of these photos come.

Categories: Photos

ANTIGONE ACROSS THE AGES

December 27, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I have been reading Sophocles’ Theban Plays, a loosely connected trilogy which reworks the myth of Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother, and whose family is fated to be doomed for three generations. I also came across the text of Berthold Brecht’s celebrated 1948 production of Antigone, the last of the Theban trilogy (though the first that Sophocles wrote). What is striking in reading the scripts side by side is the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History • Tags: aristotle, brecht, greek philosophy, greek tragedy, sophocles

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR A DIVINE UMBRELLA

December 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

TWO SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS IN THE BACK OF THE CAR DEBATING GOD: C: I don’t believe in God. A: I do. C: So where does he live? A: In the sky, of course. C: So why have astronauts never seen him? A: They were probably too busy doing things. C: No they weren’t. They’re always looking out of the window in a rocket. A: How do you know? C: I’ve seen Apollo 13.

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: god, religion

SOME ARGUMENTS NEVER DIE

December 15, 2011 by Kenan Malik

‘That Church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government.’ Who wrote […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: catholicism, free speech, jews, liberties, locke, muslims, racism, spinoza

LIFE, DEATH, MORALITY AND THE CUCKOO CLOCK

December 8, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I have been immersed in Nietzsche over the past week, from The Birth of Tragedy to The Twilight of the Idols. There are few writers who interweave such stylishness of expression with such brutality of thought. Central to all Nietzsche’s work is the insistence that without savagery there can be no creativity. As the eponymous prophet puts it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ‘The highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but that is creative’. In The Birth of Tragedy, his first published […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: cinema, nietzsche, orson welles

OUTRAGE! OUTRAGE! OH, LET ME BE OUTRAGED!

December 2, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I gave a talk on Wednesday night to the Studienbibliothek in Hamburg. Entitled ‘Left, Right and Islamism’ the talk explored the ways in which the responses of both left and right to Islamism have betrayed of basic principles of freedom and liberty. One of the key themes in the discussion afterwards was about how the liberal fear of giving offence has helped created the space for Islamists to take offence. The more that we worry that people will be offended […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, identity politics, law, liberties, monica ali

A MOODY, BROODY, FOGGY DAY IN (SOUTH) LONDON TOWN

November 28, 2011 by Kenan Malik

A series of photos taken last week on Blythe Hill Fields in south London on a day in which rolling fog mixed with blue skies and occasional bright sunshine to make for a sense of ethereal otherworldness. The photos are roughly in chronological order, from midmorning to late afternoon:

Categories: Photos • Tags: london

MYTHS OF ASSIMILATIONISM AND MULTICULTURALISM

November 25, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Here is my introduction to the discussion on ‘immigration and citizenship’ at last week’s Trudeau Foundation conference on ‘The Making of Citizenship’, about which I have already written. I was part of a double act with Ruben Zaiotti, whose job it was to talk about the Canadian experience. Mine was just to be provocative. The debate about immigration and citizenship in Europe is often presented as a debate between multiculturalism and assimilation. Not only does this oversimplify the debate, but […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: assimilationism, british asians, britishness, christopher caldwell, citizenship, france, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

ON THE RIGHT TO SATIRISE, PROVOKE, AND BE DOWNRIGHT OFFENSIVE

November 2, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were this morning firebombed, just as it was about to publish its latest edition, a spoof issue ‘guest edited by Muhammed’, in response to the Islamist Ennahda party’s victory in the Tunisian elections. Caustic and vulgar (think of a cross between Private Eye and Viz), Charlie Hebdo prides itself on being an equal opportunities offender, as happy to draw the ire of Christians and Jews (and, indeed communists) as of Muslims. The […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: charlie hebdo, danish cartoons, free speech, iqbal sacranie, islamism, liberties, tariq modood

ON EVIL

October 30, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I took part yesterday in a fascinating debate about evil at the Battle of Ideas with Mark Vernon (who has blogged about it), David Jones and Simon Baron Cohen. Here (slightly expanded) are my introductory comments to the debate. The historian Steven Shapin famously began his study of the Scientific Revolution with the sentence: ‘There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution and this is a book about it.’ I sometimes think that discussions of evil are infused with the […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: evil, holocaust, human nature, morality, religion, talks

THE MYTHS OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE

October 20, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I wrote some notes a few months back on Pandaemonium on Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe‘. I reworked that post into an essay, which has now been published in the latest issue of New Humanist. And I’m posting it here, too. UPDATE: The original post (which is much longer than this essay) won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utøya earlier this year were the first […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anders breivik, aquinas, christianity, christopher caldwell, dark ages, enlightenment, eurabia, greek philosophy, human nature, jonathan israel, judaism, judeo-christian tradition, modernity, muslim rationalism, original sin, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, western civilization