Tag: liberties

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIGHT TO OFFEND

January 29, 2014 by Kenan Malik

‘Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch’. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about the Jesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for tweeting one of the cartoons, not finding them offensive. Channel 4 decided that they were offensive and could not be shown. It would have been […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, islam, jesus and mo, liberalism, liberties, maajid nawaz, offence, religious freedom

CARTOON VIEW OF THE AUTHENTIC MUSLIM

October 23, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for the next week, so I am publishing some old material that has not previously appeared on Pandaemonium. Kåre Bluitgen’s book The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Mohammed has just been published in English. Back in 2005, it was Bluitgen’s failure to find artists willing to drawn pictures of Mohammad for his book that eventually led to the Danish cartoon crisis. So, here is an edited extract from my 2009 book From Fatwa to Jihad that tells […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, free speech, islam, islamism, kenan malik's books, liberties, muslims, rushdie affair

BEYOND THE VEIL

September 22, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The question of the Muslim veil seems never to leave the headlines for long. If the debate is not about whether states, such as France or Belgium, should have the right to ban the face veil in public, it is about what limits there should be to the wearing of the burqa or niqab in those countries, such as Britain or Germany, that do not ban it. The latest controversies have erupted in Britain after a defendant in a criminal trial […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Justice & Liberties • Tags: bernard-henri levy, burqa bans, civil society, law, liberalism, liberties, multiculturalism, religious freedom, secularism, women's rights

MYTHS OF RADICALISATION

June 2, 2013 by Kenan Malik

How do we stop young Muslims becoming radicalized? That has been the question posed by many politicians, policy makers, analysts and journalists in the aftermath of the killing of Lee Rigby in Woolwich last week. Indeed, it has been the question posed ever since the 7/7 bombings first raised the issue of ‘homegrown’ terrorism. The idea of ‘radicalization’ as the process by which young Muslims get drawn into jihadist circles has become received wisdom within security forces and among politicians, […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, britain, identity politics, islam, islamism, liberties, marc sageman, radicalisation, terrorism, war on terror

DIVERSITY, THE MARKET AND ARTISTIC FREE EXPRESSION

February 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I took part last week in a conference on artistic free expression called ‘Taking the Offensive’ organized by Index on Censorship. It was the culmination of a long project through which Index on Censorship has sought both to raise awareness of threats to artistic free expression and to clarify responses. Back in July 2011 Index on Censorship published, as part of this project, a report, Beyond Belief – Theatre, Freedom of Expression and Public Order. Taking as its starting point the controversies surrounding Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, cultural policy, free speech, gurpreet kaur bhatti, liberties, multiculturalism, rushdie affair, social inclusion, the satanic verses

ON DEMOCRACY AS A GOOD

January 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

If 2011 brought the promise of democracy to the Arab world, in 2012 democratic change appeared to founder on political reality. In Egypt, democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi has tried to gather into his own hands powers far greater that that held previously by Hosni Mubarak, and is railroading through a constitution that many fear will undermine the gains of the revolution. In Libya and Tunisia Islamist-influenced governments are promoting laws restricting rights, constraining speech, and maintaining social inequality. In […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: arab spring, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, liberties, western policy

THE WRONG SOLUTION TO THE WRONG PROBLEM

December 1, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Everybody believes in press freedom. But what is it to have a free press? And how do we protect it? These are the questions raised by the publication of the Leveson report into the ‘culture practice and ethics’ of the British press and the debate that has both preceded and followed it. In his report, Lord Justice Leveson talks of his ‘outrage’ at the ‘havoc wreaked on the lives of innocent people’ by the unethical and criminal behaviour of sections of the British […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: first amendment, free speech, journalism, leveson inquiry, liberalism, liberties, murdoch

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND AUTHORITARIAN ATHEISTS

August 22, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My ‘Notes on Religious Freedom’, a shorter version of which appeared in New Humanist, was picked up by Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True and led to a fascinating debate, much of it critical of my arguments. I am grateful to WEIT for linking to the essay and for hosting the debate. What was striking about much of the criticism was the degree to which it was underpinned by deeply authoritarian sentiments. I have observed before the way that […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: atheism, ethics, free speech, liberties, new atheism, religious freedom

OUT OF BOUNDS

August 5, 2012 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my previous post on abuse and how to deal with it, I am republishing this essay on changing notions of incitement that was first published in Index on Censorship in 2008. The essay was written in the context of the debate about the war on terror – it is an edited version of a talk I gave at an Index on Censorship conference on ‘Extremism and the Law: Free Speech in an Age of Terror’. It does not […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, hate speech, incitement laws, iqbal sacranie, liberties, lyrical terrorist, offence, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, terrorism, war on terror

ME. MY BRAIN. MY CRIME.

July 13, 2012 by Kenan Malik

‘I’m going to assume that you accept the materialist view of personality, that character/mind is determined by both the brain and environmental factors. You used the examples of trust and anger as emotions that are not necessarily good for the former or bad for the latter. But what about indisputably pernicious tendencies like sexual predation/violence, psychopathy or homicidal urges? If one accepted a materialist conception of the mind, then wouldn’t it be an uncontroversial good to use medical/scientific means to […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: alex rosenberg, crime, free will, julian savulescu, liberties, materialism, mind, moral enhancement, morality, neuroscience, racism, sam harris

WHY HATE SPEECH SHOULD NOT BE BANNED

April 19, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave an interview last year to Peter Molnar for a book on the regulation of hate speech that he was editing with Michael Herz. The book comes out of a series of conferences and seminars organised by New York’s Cardozo School of Law and the Central European University in Budapest. (I presented a paper at a seminar in Budapest). Other contributors include Jeremy Waldron, Ronald Dworkin, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Nadine Strossen and Bhikhu Parekh. The book is finally published this […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: blasphemy, far right, free speech, hate speech, holocaust denial, homophobia, incitement laws, james watson, liberties, race relations act, racism, religion, religious hatred law, rwanda

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 15]: POLITICS, MORALITY AND THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION

April 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I am publishing from my almost-written book on the history of moral thought, we have reached Chapter 16. Beginning in the eighteenth century with Enlightenment hope and ending in the twentieth with postmodern despair, this chapter explores how the changing character of movements for social and political liberation have influenced moral thought – and how changing moral conceptions have, in turn, influenced movements for liberation. This extract is from the beginning of the chapter, and […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: declaration of the rights of man, french revolution, haitian revolution, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, liberties, morality, robin blackburn, slavery, toussaint l'ouverture

SHAWSHANK WITHOUT THE REDEMPTION

April 6, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Imagine being held in solitary confinement, not for a day, not for a year, but for forty years. Imagine entering a cell, four paces long, three paces wide, when Richard Nixon was in the White House and still being confined to that cell, as Barack Obama gears up for re-election. Imagine being confined to that cell for every minute of those forty years apart from time out to shower and a walk around an outdoor cage three times a week, […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties • Tags: angola 3, injustice, liberties, prisons, racism, usa

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