Tag: free speech

OSMAN KAVALA AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF HOPE

May 21, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the imprisonment of Osman Kavala and what it signals about repression in Turkey, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Meghan Markle and why making inherited privilege more ‘diverse’ is not cause for celebration.) It was published in the Observer, 20 May 2018, under the headline ‘In Erdoğan’s warped world, even intellectuals are now “terrorists”‘. Imagine a seminar in London. Around the table are Blairites and Corbynistas, […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: britain, erdogan, free speech, osman kavala, turkey, war on terror

‘TROUBLE IS AT THE HEART OF WHAT WE DO’

May 18, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Last week Pater Mayer died. He was a giant of the publishing industry. An American, he was in 1978 given the job of rescuing the venerable British publishers Penguin, which then had become almost defunct. He turned it into a global brand, and a major force in publishing. He transformed publishing in India by founding of Penguin India. Ten years later came the event that was to define both Mayer and Penguin. In September 1988 Penguin published Salman Rushdie’s The […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ayatollah khomeini, fatwa, free speech, islamism, penguin books, peter mayer, publishing, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

THE MUDDLE OVER THE ‘GAY CAKE’

May 7, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the row in debate about Ashers, the Northern Irish bakers that refused to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the changing attitudes of left and right towards the House of Lords.) It was published in the Observer, 6 May 2018, under the headline ‘The ‘gay cake’ fight: why the bakers had a right to refuse this order’. […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: ashers, censorship, discrimination, equality, free speech, gay cake, gay marriage, gay rights, northern ireland, peter tatchell, religious freedom

ON THE ASSASSINATION OF KATIE HOPKINS

April 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the row over the BBC’s broadcast of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood speech’). It was published in the Observer, 15 April 2018, under the headline ‘Why provocateur Katie Hopkins is the perfect symbol for our tribal age’. I have not seen the play. But I am going to write about it. Which seems an apt metaphor for the current state of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: free speech, hate speech, immigration, katie hopkins, liberal hypocrisy, the assassination of katie hopkins

SHOULD OFFENCE BE BANNED? OR HATE?

March 25, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on the necessity of abortion rights). It was published in the Observer, 25 March 2018, under the headline ‘The ‘Nazi pug’: giving offence is inevitable and often necessary in a plural society’. Does making a film of a dog giving a Nazi salute constitute a hate crime? And should high street retailers stock racist and Nazi books? Two questions raised this week […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: anti-racism, anti-semitism, censorship, free speech, hate speech, hope not hate, left, offence, pluralism

DONALD TRUMP AND BRITAIN’S LIBEL LAWS

February 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on Donald Trump’s fancy for stricter libel laws. It was published under the headline ‘Trump Wants British Libel Laws. America Does Not.’ While American lawmakers once sought to protect their citizens from the clutches of British libel law, Mr. Trump now wants British-style laws in the United States. . After a long campaign by free-speech organizations, the British libel law was finally amended five years ago. The 2013 […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech, International • Tags: british libel laws, british politics, donald trump, first amendment, free speech, libel, libel tourism, usa

FAKE NEWS AND THE GATEKEEPERS OF TRUTH

February 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece in response to a Treasury tweet on how British taxpayers ‘helped end the slave trade‘.) It was published in the Observer, 11 February 2018, under the headline ‘Fake news has a long history. Beware the state being keeper of “the truth”‘. . Before Facebook, there was the coffee house. In the 17th-century, panic gripped British royal circles that these newly established drinking […]

Categories: Free Speech, Politics • Tags: censorship, donald trump, emmanuel macron, fake news, free speech

100 DAYS BEHIND BARS

February 9, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This week Osman Kavala spent his 100th day in prison. Kavala is one of most important public intellectuals in Turkey, has played a prominent role both in defending the rights and liberties of all in Turkey, including Kurds and Armenians, and in bringing together people of different political viewpoints to discuss their differences in civil debate. He was arrested in October, and now faces trumped-up charges of organizing the June 2013 Gezi Park protests, of supporting the failed coup of […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: censorship, erdogan, free speech, osman kavala, repression, turkey

LETTER FROM OSMAN KAVALA

January 18, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Osman Kavala, one of the most important intellectual and cultural figures in Turkey, was arrested in November. He remains in detention, in solitary confinement. He recently put out a statement through his lawyers. This is an English translation, first published by the Free Osman Kavala campaign. The situation, not just for Osman, but for hundreds of academics and others who have been detained in recent months, remains dangerous. Earlier this month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s claimed in a speech that […]

Categories: Academia, International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: academic freedom, censorship, erdogan, free speech, osman kavala, turkey

RETHINKING THE CHALLENGE OF ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY

November 15, 2017 by Kenan Malik

In 1997 the British anti-racist organisation the Runnymede Trust published its highly influential report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. The report both brought to public consciousness the reality of anti-Muslim bigotry and framed it in terms of ‘Islamophobia’ – indeed, it played a significant role in establishing the term as legitimate and important. Twenty years on, the Runnymede Trust has brought out a follow-up report Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All, which is a stock-take on current views, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, british politics, diversity, free speech, gill valentine, hate speech, iqbal sacranie, islam, islamophobia, multiculturalism, muslims, offence, racism, runnymede trust

WHAT IS RIGHT? WHAT IS LEFT?

November 2, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is a video of a debate on ‘What is right? What is left?’ at the Festival of Questions in Melbourne in October. It was hosted by the Wheeler Centre. Seven of us had two minutes each to answer ‘What is right for immigration?’, ‘…for the economy?’ and ‘…for society?’. Sounds mad, but it was actually an engaging event.

Categories: Kenan Malik, Race & Immigration • Tags: australia, capitalism, debates, Economy, free speech, identity politics, immigration, left, right

IN SUPPORT OF OSMAN KAVALA

October 26, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Imagine a seminar in Washington. Around the table are Bernie Sanders supporters and alt right activists, fans of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump voters, auto workers and Wall Street bankers, abortion activists and Evangelical Christians. And all discussing the question of America’s political future, civilly and articulately, with deep disagreements but also with mutual respect. It would be difficult to imagine this in Washington. Still less that a similar seminar could take place in Istanbul. Yet, when I gave a […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: armenia, censorship, free speech, kurds, liberties, osman kavala, turkey

FROM THE SATANIC VERSES TO CHARLIE HEBDO

October 19, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is a talk I gave to the Integrity 20 conference in Brisbane, on 19 October 2017. On 14 February 1989, Valentine’s Day, the Ayotollah Khomeini issued his infamous fatwa against Salman Rushdie. It was a brutally shocking act that forced Salman Rushdie into hiding for almost a decade. 26 years later, on 7 January 2015, came an even more viscerally shocking act, when two gunmen forced their way into the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, sprayed […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, identity politics, islamism, left, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

ON THOSE ‘DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS’

June 5, 2017 by Kenan Malik

In her speech outside No 10 Downing Street on Sunday morning in response to the London Bridge attack the night before, Theresa May insisted that ‘enough is enough’. ‘We cannot’, she said, ‘pretend that things can continue as they are.’ There is ‘far too much tolerance of extremism in our country’. Rooting out extremism ‘will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations’. It was a speech long on rhetoric, but short on sense. It is May herself, first as Home […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: british politics, free speech, islamism, jihadism, saudi arabia, terrorism, theresa may, war on terror

FREE SPEECH AND UNSAFE SPACES

April 10, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the transcript of a talk I gave on ‘Free speech on campus’ at a conference entitled ‘Forever Young?’, exploring questions about universities, shifts in generational attitudes and the meaning of adulthood. The conference was held at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, on 8 April 2017. . In February 2015, Zineb El Rhazoui, a Moroccan journalist at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, spoke at the University of Chicago Law School, having been invited by the French Society. It was […]

Categories: Academia, Free Speech • Tags: censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, identity politics, laura kipnis, left, moral autonomy, offence, radicalism, safe space, self-censorship, students, therapeutic society, trigger warnings, universities