Tag: jihadism

THE DEGENERATION OF A DEGENERATE IDEOLOGY

January 29, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the changing character of terrorism, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 26 January 2025, under the headline “Until we tackle the nihilistic rage behind terrorism, it will stay the menace of our age”. “Britain faces a new threat”, Keir Starmer claimed last week after Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the murders of three young girls in a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport; terror not just from “highly organised groups with clear political intent” but also “acts […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: axel rudakubana, damon smith, islamism, jack merritt, jihadism, khalid masood, low-tech terrorism, manchester arena bombing, rik coolsaet, salman abedi, saskia jones, southport killings, state failure, terrorism, usman khan, zakaria bulhan

TERROR, HYPOCRISY AND ILLIBERALISM

November 10, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on responses to Islamist terrorism, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Poland, abortion and the power of polar protest.) It was published on 8 November 2020, under the headline “Fanatics have no right to censor critics. But neither does Emmanuel Macron”. Letters complaining about newspaper articles are unexceptional. Not so letters from the Élysée Palace. Last week, the Financial Times published, after the killing of teacher Samuel Paty in Paris and of churchgoers in Nice, an article by its […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, War on terror • Tags: blasphemy, censorship, charlie hebdo, emmanuel macron, farhad khosrokhavar, financial rimes, france, islamism, jihadism, racism, samuel paty, secularism, terrorism, vienna attaack

INHUMANITY AND REDEMPTION

December 9, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about deradicalisation and redemption in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the shooting dead of rape suspects in India.) It was published on 8 December 2019, under the headline ‘Redemption defines a civilised society. We must not forsake the idea’. Can terrorists be deradicalised? Do all offenders, even those who commit the most abhorrent of crimes, deserve a second chance? […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: deradicalisation, healthy identity intervention, human nature, islamism, jack merritt, jihadism, joseph mccann, london, london bridge attack, radicalisation, redemption, saskia jones, terrorism, usman khan

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

SHAMIMA BEGUM AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

February 18, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate over Shamima Begum, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the BBC’s attitude to abortion.) It was published in the Observer, 17 February 2019, under the headline ‘The possibility of redemption is central to a humane society’. How do you solve a problem like Shamima? In February 2015, 15-year-old east London schoolgirl Shamima Begum travelled to Syria with two friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, to join Islamic State. Last […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, War on terror • Tags: citizenship, ethics, islamic state, islamism, jihadi returnees, jihadism, moral responsibility, morality, sajid javid, shamima begum

SAUDI VICIOUSNESS AND WESTERN CYNICISM

August 27, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Saudi Arabia’s ‘reform’ process, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 26 August 2018 under the headline ‘Don’t be deluded – our Saudi ‘partners’ are masters of repression’. Five Saudi activists face possible execution. Their crimes? ‘Participating in protests’, ‘chanting slogans hostile to the regime’ and ‘filming protests and publishing on social media’. The five, including women’s rights campaigner Israa al-Ghomgham, come from the Shia-majority Eastern Province. They have spent more than two years in […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, War on terror • Tags: iran, iranian revolution, islamism, jihadism, mohammed bin salman, saudi arabia, terrorism, western policy, yemen

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

FROM LEFT RADICALISM TO RADICAL ISLAMISM

May 28, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 28 May 2017, under the headline ‘How did the left radicalism of my Manchester youth give way to Islamism?’ Were I 20 today, would I be attracted to Islamism or desire to become a soldier of Islamic State? It seems shocking, even insulting, especially to those who lost their lives in the Manchester Arena on Monday night, just to ask that question. It seems more shocking still not simply to give a resounding ‘No’ as an answer, […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: asian youth movement, britain, british asians, british politics, france, grunwick, islamism, jihadism, left, muslims, working class

MANCHESTER AND THE JIHADI STATE OF MIND

May 24, 2017 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times, on the Manchester bomb attack: We need to think more deeply, too, about our immediate responses to acts of terror. Terrorism is a form of theater. Particularly for contemporary Islamist terror, what matters is the spectacle, nothing else. The more depraved that spectacle, the more it achieves its aim. . Murder someone on a Manchester street and it makes the local press. Slaughter two dozen people at a […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: dylann roof, islamism, jihadism, manchester, media, terrorism

THE CHALLENGE OF THE JIHADI STATE OF MIND

May 11, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the Kreisky Forum in Vienna on 11 May 2017. It pulls together many of the themes from previous talks and essays. Last week a 20-year-old Briton called Damon Smith was found guilty of planting a homemade bomb filled with ball bearings on a London Underground train. Police discovered in his flat shredded pages of an article titled ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom’ from Inspire, a magazine published by an al-Qaida affiliate. […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: assimilationism, france, identity politics, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, multiculturalism, racism, radicalization, terrorism

IDEOLOGICAL VIOLENCE AND SOCIOPATHIC RAGE

March 26, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This article was published in the Observer on 26 March 2017, under the headline ‘How can we distinguish violence driven by ideology from sociopathic rage?’ What Khalid Masood wreaked on Westminster last week was depraved and shocking. It was not, however, another 7/7. The attacks on the tube and a bus by four suicide bombers on 7 July 2005 were relatively sophisticated; the bombers had been commissioned and trained by al-Qaida and their actions carefully choreographed. Wednesday’s attack was, in […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: ira, islamic state, james harris jackson, jihadism, khalid masood, racism, terrorism, westminster attack, white nationalism

WHY UPDATE FROM FATWA TO JIHAD?

February 9, 2017 by Kenan Malik

My book From Fatwa to Jihad was first published in 2009, on the twentieth anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Eight years on, I have just published an updated version with a new Afterword. Why? In 1989 the fatwa against Salman Rushdie had come as a great shock, both in Britain and globally, and its consequences reverberated through both domestic and international politics in the two decades that followed. Much was written about it. Yet, there had been little […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: assimilationism, charlie hebdo, free speech, From Fatwa to Jihad, islamism, jihadism, kenan malik's books, radicalization, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

EDITORIAL INTELLIGENCE COMMENT AWARD 2016

November 24, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Yay, I won an award. The Editorial Intelligence 2016 ‘Society and diversity’ comment award. (No, I am not quite sure, either, what ‘Society and diversity comment’ amounts to, but I am immensely pleased to have won it.) The Editorial Intelligence awards have grown over the past decade to become perhaps the most important journalistic comment awards in the UK. Other winners this year included Jonathan Freedland as ‘Commentariat of the Year’, Gary Younge for ‘Comment Piece of the Year’, Sam […]

Categories: Kenan Malik • Tags: assimilationism, awards, editorial intelligence, evil, identity politics, immigration, islam, islamism, jihadism, multiculturalism, ukip

COMING SOON…

September 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My 2009 book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy will be published in a new edition next February. It will have an extended (12,000 word) Afterword to bring it up to date. It will also have a new subtitle – How the World Changed From The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo. I will provide more details closer to the time. In the meantime, here is an extract from the Preface to the new edition: From the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: assimilationism, charlie hebdo, france, free speech, From Fatwa to Jihad, islamic state, jihadism, kenan malik's books, multiculturalism, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

BETWEEN RAGE AND TERROR

September 7, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on the nature of comteporary terror. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline These Days of Rage. On July 14, Bastille Day, in Nice, France, 85 people died after being mowed down on the promenade by a man driving a truck. Four days later, […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: angela merkel, france, germany, islamism, jihadism, terrorism, war on terror