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JYLLANDS-POSTEN AND THE AYATOLLAH WITHIN

November 17, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Flemming Rose is the former culture editor of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten who, in 2005, published the Muhammed cartoons and launched a global controversy. In a new book, De Besatte (The Possessed), Rose claims that far from defending freedom of expression, Jyllands-Posten attempted to gag him and to prevent him from saying or writing anything controversial. The Danish paper Information interviewed me about the case. This is a (rough) translation of the article. ‘Jyllands-Posten viste sin indre ayatollah’ Hans Henrik Rasmussen, […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: censorship, danish cartoons, denmark, diversity, flemming rose, free speech, geert wilders, index on censorship, jytte klausen, rushdie affair, self-censorship, the satanic verses

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND ACADEMIC COWARDICE

July 22, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is in response to the decision of the University of Cape Town to ‘disinvite’ Flemming Rose, former cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten responsible for publishing the Danish cartoons, from giving this year’s TB Davie Lecture on Academic Freedom. Last year, I was honoured to be invited to the University of Cape Town to give the 2015 TB Davie lecture. It was a privilege to have been able to become part of the history that is the TB Davie lecture, a history of resistance […]

Categories: Academia, Free Speech, International • Tags: academic freedom, danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, islamophobia

LIBERATING FREE SPEECH FROM THE SHACKLES OF BAD FAITH

April 2, 2012 by Kenan Malik

‘I have definitely become a free speech fundamentalist,’ says Flemming Rose. Perhaps that should not be surprising. It was, after all, Rose who, as culture editor of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, helped launch the Danish cartoon controversy in 2005. He had picked up on a story about the difficulties that children’s author Kåre Bluitgen had faced in finding an illustrator for a book he was writing on Islam. Every illustrator that Bluitgen had contacted had been worried that he would end […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: behzti, danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, index on censorship, islamism, islamophobia, jytte klausen, kenan malik's books, liberal hypocrisy, liberties, locke, racism, rushdie affair

THE TOLERANCE OF OBEDIENCE

March 14, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Yorkshire teenager Azhar Ahmed was having a rant last week on Facebook as many people often do. He had got apoplectically angry about media coverage of the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan, contrasting it with what he saw as the silence that has shrouded the deaths of thousands of Afghani civilians: People gassing about the death of Soldiers. What about the innocent familys who have been brutally killed.. The women who have been raped.. The children who have […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, islamism, liberalism, liberties, tariq modood, tolerance

FREE SPEECH AND DOUBLE STANDARDS

February 22, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I have written an essay for the upcoming 40th anniversary issue of Index on Censorship that explores the changing character of the free speech debate in recent decades. It includes an interview with Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, whose challenge to cartoonists to depict the Prophet Muhammad helped launch the Danish cartoon controversy. I will publish the essay in full when the new issue of Index comes out in March. But here is a short extract that probes the question […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: ayaan hirsi ali, danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, geert wilders, islam, islamism, liberal hypocrisy, liberties, locke, martin amis, milton, muslims