free speech | Pandaemonium

CENSORSHIP AND THE VOICE OF PRIVILEGE

July 21, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the importance of free speech for those without power, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Shamima Begum and British citizenship.) It was published on 19 July 2020, under the headline ‘It’s the powerless who suffer when free speech is threatened’. The cartoon shows a bearded man in paradise, reclining on a couch in a tent, with a virgin on either arm. God pokes his head in. ‘Do you need anything?’ he asks. ‘Yes, […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: arab world, cancel culture, censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, freedom struggles, joking about jihad, naked hattar, privilege

THE EPIC OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

June 27, 2020 by Kenan Malik

José Clemente Orozco, along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, is one of the triumvirate of Mexican muralists deeply influential on 20th century art. Orozco was not as fine a painter as Rivera, but there is a greater ambiguity in his work. The Epic of American Civilization is probably his most celebrated work. It was commissioned by Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, after recommendation by two of its art historians, Artemas S Packard and Churchill P Lathrop. Painted between 1932 […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: art, dartmouth college, free speech, jose clemente orozco, mexican art, murals, the epic of american civilization, usa

THE IMPORTANCE OF A LIT FEST IN DHAKA

November 2, 2019 by Kenan Malik

I am speaking next week at the Dhaka Lit Fest, something I am particularly looking forward to. In a place like Bangladesh, more known in the West for poverty and terror, a literary festival might seem a luxury, a bauble for the rich and cosmopolitan. It is anything but. It is precisely in a country like Bangladesh that such an event becomes so important. Between 2013 and 2016, a series of horrific murders of freethinking and atheist bloggers by Islamists shocked […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International, Kenan Malik • Tags: bangladesh, dhaka, dhaka lit fest, free speech, lahore lit fest

THE ILLIBERALISM OF THE PHILOSOPHER OF LIBERALISM

September 9, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and the meaning of tolerance, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on politics as drama.) It was published on 8 September 2019, under the headline ‘Why western liberals have long picked the wrong historical hero’. Lost in the library of a small American college has lain a text by one of England’s foremost philosophers that no one knew he had written. ‘Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: catholicism, enlightenment, free speech, jonathan israel, liberalism, locke, radical enlightenment, religious freedom, spinoza, tolerance

CARTOONS TOO DANGEROUS

June 15, 2019 by Kenan Malik

A version of this is published in the Observer, 16 June 2019. What does a newspaper do if it publishes an anti-Semitic cartoon? Determine that it won’t do so again? Or stop publishing cartoons? The New York Times appears to have taken the second route. In April, its international edition (which is distinct from its US edition) ran a syndicated cartoon by the Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes that depicted the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as a guide dog leading a blind Donald Trump […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: cartoons, free speech, new york times

WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK?

May 31, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the Bristol Festival of Ideas, 21 May 2019, as part of the Coleridge Series. ‘Who has the right to speak?’ It is the key question in debates around free speech. Who should be allowed to speak? What should be permitted to be said? And who makes the decision? Historically, the issues were relatively clear. Censorship was imposed from the top. Its aim was to deflect, contain or deem illegitimate any […]

Categories: Free Speech, War on terror • Tags: anti-terror laws, blasphemy, censorship, corporate censorship, fake news, free speech, gill valentine, hate speech, incitement laws, iqbal sacranie, muslim, offence, prevent, racism, self-censorship, social media, tariq modood, universities

ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY AND FAR-RIGHT TERROR

March 25, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the relationship between anti-Muslim bigotry and far-right terror, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 24 March 2019, under the headline ‘Silencing Islamophobes is as futile a response as banning the Qur’an’. What drove Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch gunman, to commit his heinous acts? It’s a question that has, understandably, occupied much media space . A key debate has been over the role of anti-Muslim hatred and its entrenchment in mainstream society. In an open […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Politics • Tags: anti-muslim hatred, brenton tarrant, christchurch, douglas murray, far right, far-right terror, free speech, hate speech, immigration, islamism, jihadism, melanie phillips, muslims, terrorism, white nationalism

DISAGREEMENT IS NOT HATRED

November 26, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the transgender debate, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the war on terror). It was published in the Observer, 25 November 2018, under the headline ‘Debate ends when we label views we simply disagree with as ‘hatred’’. ‘It is better to debate a question without settling it,’ observed the 18th-century French writer Joseph Joubert, ‘than to settle a question without debating it.’ How naive that sounds today. In this age […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties, Women • Tags: bigotry, censorship, feminism, free speech, hate speech, joseph joubert, kathleen stock, maghan murphy, transgender, twitter, women's rights

BLASPHEMY, RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

October 29, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on a European Court of Human Rights ruling and on changing forms of blasphemy law, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the contrast between the EU’s response to Italy on immigration and the budget). It was published in the Observer, 28 October 2018, under the headline ‘None of us should enjoy the right to have our beliefs shielded from abuse‘. Should it be illegal to call the prophet Muhammad […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: blasphemy, censorship, european court of human rights, free speech, gay news, iqbal sacranie, islam, james kirkup, mary whitehouse, muhammad