charlie hebdo | Pandaemonium

IN THE WILDERNESS ABOUT CHARLIE HEBDO

August 8, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part on Friday in a debate on ‘The state of free expression after Charlie Hebdo‘ at the Wilderness Festival, with Anshuman Mondal and Tahmima Anam. It was a good debate, but frustratingly short. I agreed with virtually all the issues raised by Tahmima Anam (her main argument, from the perspective of a Bangladeshi-born writer, was that the state is amore dangerous threat to free speech than extremist groups.) But Anshuman Mondal (‘There is almost nothing that Kenan and I […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anshuman mondal, censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, freedom struggles, pluralism, racism, rights

WRONG ABOUT FREE SPEECH – AGAIN

April 29, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week six writers – Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi – withdrew from the PEN American Center’s annual gala on 5 May in protest against the free speech organization’s decision to give the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award. In an email to PEN, Kushner said she was withdrawing because of Charlie Hebdo‘s ‘cultural intolerance’ and its promotion of ‘a kind of forced secular view’. Carey criticised […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: charlie hebdo, english pen, france, francine prose, free speech, islamophobia, left, liberalism, liberties, michael ondaatje, muslims, peter carey, racism

THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT FREE SPEECH

April 14, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This Barney & Clyde cartoon was published in Washington Post in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings. At the heart of the cartoon, suggested Gene Weingarten, one of the creators of the strip, was ‘the epistemological question asked by Magritte in his famous Ceci n’est pas une pipe painting: Is a representation of a pipe actually a pipe? Who is to define truth? The artists? The viewer? Who is in charge of reality?’ Weingarten saw the questions as directed […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, garry trudeau, hate speech, islam, liberties, mazen kerbaj

BRITAIN AND FRANCE, CENSORSHIP AND IDENTITY

February 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part in a discussion at the Institut Français in London featuring the French film-maker Karim Miské, whose debut novel Arab Jazz, a noirish policier set in a Parisian banlieue, has just been published. The discussion, in the shadow of the Charlie Hebdo killings, focussed on questions of Islam, identity, free speech and the differences between British and French social policy. Also taking part in the discussion were the translator Ben Faccini, Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, and the journalist Suzanne […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Multiculturalism • Tags: anti-semitism, assimilationism, britain, censorship, charlie hebdo, france, free speech, identity politics, islam, jihadism, multiculturalism, muslims, national identity, racism, secularism

CIVILIZED FRANCE AND SAVAGE FRANCE

January 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I wrote in a previous post about the process by which French citizens of North African origin were pushed out to the banlieues, redefined as ‘Muslims’ and cast as the ‘Other’, as not really part of the French nation. What this process revealed, I suggested, were then anxieties of the French elite about the values and identity of the nation. I am publishing here three passages from writers of very different perspectives who speak to those anxieties, from both sides of […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: andrew hussey, assimilationism, banlieues, charlie hebdo, france, islam, islamism, karim miske, michel houellebecq, muslims, national identity, racism, sartre

ON FREE SPEECH AND DOUBLE STANDARDS

January 16, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is about Charlie Hebdo, Dieudonné and double standards in free speech. Here are the opening paragraphs. Read the full article in the INYT. On Tuesday, the French police arrested the controversial French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala. He had written on Facebook ‘I feel like Charlie Coulibaly’ — a mash-up of Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four Jewish hostages in a kosher supermarket in Paris, in an attack linked […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: charlie hebdo, dieudonne, france, free speech, islam, liberal hypocrisy

ASSIMILATIONISM VS MULTICULTURALISM

January 12, 2015 by Kenan Malik

One of the key debates in European social policy has been that between multiculturalism and assimilationism. French ‘assimilationist’ policies are generally seen as the polar opposite of British-style multiculturalism. French politicians pride themselves in having rejected the divisive consequences of multiculturalism. Unlike in the rest of Europe, they insist, in France every individual is treated as a citizen, not as a member of a particular racial or cultural group. The question of French social policy, and of social divisions, has […]

Categories: International, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: assimilationism, bernard-henri levy, britain, burqa bans, charlie hebdo, enlightenment, france, islam, jihadism, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, universalism

JE SUIS CHARLIE? IT’S A BIT LATE

January 8, 2015 by Kenan Malik

‘Je suis Charlie’. It’s a phrase in every newspaper, in every Twitter feed, on demonstrations in cities across Europe. The expressions of solidarity with those slain in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices are impressive. They are also too late. Had journalists and artists and political activists taken a more robust view on free speech over the past 20 years then we may never have come to this. Instead, they have helped create a new culture of self-censorship. Partly, it […]

Categories: Free Speech, International • Tags: charlie hebdo, france, free speech, islam, islamism

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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