Tag: muslims

TO SEE BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES

April 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 5 April 2015, under the headline ‘Diversity and immigration are not the problem. Political courage is…’ Two events this week, some 2000 miles apart, captured the fraught character of the current debate about multicultural Britain. On Wednesday, nine Britons from Rochdale were arrested in Turkey, apparently as they tried to cross the border into Syria. One was the son of a local Labour councilor Shakil Ahmed, who said he was ‘shocked’ to hear […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, diversity, identity politics, immigration, islam, islamism, multiculturalism, muslims, ukip, working class

BE PRAGMATIC, LEGITIMISE TERROR

February 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Shortly after the attack on the free speech meeting in Copenhagen earlier this month, I gave an interview to Anton Geist of the Danish newspaper Information. It was published last week. Here is a rough translation (my interview was given in English, so parts of this have undergone a double translation, from English to Danish and back to English again). If we say it’s wrong to give offence, we provide terrorists with their arguments by Anton Geist, Information, 21 February 2015 A […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: andrew brown, copenhagen attack, denmark, free speech, hanif kureishi, islamism, lars vilks, liberalism, liberties, muslims, rushdie affair, self-censorship

THE FAILURE OF MULTICULTURALISM

February 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is an essay about multiculturalism in Europe that I wrote for the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, which has a series of features on ‘The Trouble with Race’. 1 Thirty years ago, many Europeans saw multiculturalism – the embrace of an inclusive, diverse society – as an answer to Europe’s social problems. Today, a growing number consider it to be a cause of them. That perception has led some mainstream politicians, including British Prime Minister David Cameron […]

Categories: Britain, International, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: assimilationism, britain, british asians, europe, france, germany, handsworth riots, identity politics, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, turkish migrants, working class

BRITAIN AND FRANCE, CENSORSHIP AND IDENTITY

February 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part in a discussion at the Institut Français in London featuring the French film-maker Karim Miské, whose debut novel Arab Jazz, a noirish policier set in a Parisian banlieue, has just been published. The discussion, in the shadow of the Charlie Hebdo killings, focussed on questions of Islam, identity, free speech and the differences between British and French social policy. Also taking part in the discussion were the translator Ben Faccini, Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, and the journalist Suzanne […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Multiculturalism • Tags: anti-semitism, assimilationism, britain, censorship, charlie hebdo, france, free speech, identity politics, islam, jihadism, multiculturalism, muslims, national identity, racism, secularism

CIVILIZED FRANCE AND SAVAGE FRANCE

January 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I wrote in a previous post about the process by which French citizens of North African origin were pushed out to the banlieues, redefined as ‘Muslims’ and cast as the ‘Other’, as not really part of the French nation. What this process revealed, I suggested, were then anxieties of the French elite about the values and identity of the nation. I am publishing here three passages from writers of very different perspectives who speak to those anxieties, from both sides of […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: andrew hussey, assimilationism, banlieues, charlie hebdo, france, islam, islamism, karim miske, michel houellebecq, muslims, national identity, racism, sartre

ASSIMILATIONISM VS MULTICULTURALISM

January 12, 2015 by Kenan Malik

One of the key debates in European social policy has been that between multiculturalism and assimilationism. French ‘assimilationist’ policies are generally seen as the polar opposite of British-style multiculturalism. French politicians pride themselves in having rejected the divisive consequences of multiculturalism. Unlike in the rest of Europe, they insist, in France every individual is treated as a citizen, not as a member of a particular racial or cultural group. The question of French social policy, and of social divisions, has […]

Categories: International, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: assimilationism, bernard-henri levy, britain, burqa bans, charlie hebdo, enlightenment, france, islam, jihadism, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, universalism

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH MULTICULTURALISM?

October 16, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my talk about multiculturalism that I gave to the Secularism 2014 conference in London last week. For a more detailed discussion of multiculturalism, see my Milton K Wong lecture ‘What is wrong with multiculturalism?’ or my extended essay Multiculturalism and its Discontents. Before we can discuss multiculturalism, we need to distinguish between two processes or phenomena that all too often get confused. On the one hand, the lived experience of diversity; and, on the other, […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: anti-racism, cultural diversity, equality, identity politics, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

HATREDS, OLD AND NEW

October 9, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on anti-Semitism in Europe published in the New York Times in August under the headline ‘Enough Hate for Everyone’. (I cannot post the full versions of my New York Times articles on Pandaemonium until a month after the original publication.) A few years ago, I was a guest on Start the Week, a BBC radio discussion show. Among the other guests was the novelist Eva Figes, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and a […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-muslim hatred, anti-politics, anti-semitism, dieudonne, europe, eva figes, identity politics, israel, muslims

ANTI-POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF HATRED

August 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my latest column for the International New York Times, published under the headline ‘Enough Hate for Everyone’. A few years ago, I was a guest on Start the Week, a BBC radio discussion show. Among the other guests was the novelist Eva Figes, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and a fierce critic of Israel. Israel, she suggested, would have built gas chambers to exterminate the Palestinians but for the fear it would ‘be found out’. What astonished […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-muslim hatred, anti-politics, anti-semitism, eva figes, identity politics, israel, muslims

MELANIE PHILLIPS RESPONDS

March 31, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Last week I wrote a critique of Melanie Phillips’ column in which she claimed the progressive ground for critics of mass immigration. Here is her response to my critique. My thanks to Melanie for taking the time and trouble to write this. I have written a response which I originally posted as a comment but have now attached to the end of this post. ‘A compendium of straw men, misunderstandings and questionable assertions’ I’m afraid Kenan’s criticism of my Times […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, fortress europe, immigration, liberalism, melanie phillips, muslims, racism

IF ONLY SHE HAD READ MY ESSAY FIRST…

March 27, 2014 by Kenan Malik

On Monday my essay ‘In Defence of Diversity’ – which exposes the hollowness of contemporary anti-immigration rhetoric, and places it in historical context – won the 3 Quarks Daily 2014 essay prize. And on Monday, the Times’ new columnist Melanie Phillips – my old colleague from the days when I was a panelist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze – published a polemic trying to claim the progressive ground for critics of mass immigration. Her arguments are familiar – […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-semitism, british politics, david goodhart, fortress europe, immigration, liberalism, melanie phillips, muslims, racism, working class

HULLABALOO OVER THE SATANIC VERSES

February 18, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my essay on the changing landscape of free speech in the 25 years since the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, here is ‘Hullabaloo over Satanic Verses’, a Channel 4 documentary first broadcast in 1989 on the night of the fatwa. It was made by the writer and documentary film maker Gita Sahgal, one of the great stalwarths of the struggle against racism and for free speech and women’s rights. She was a founder of the Southall Black Sisters and […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: gita sahgal, islamism, liberalism, liberties, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

…BUT AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM

November 28, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week, I posted an essay ‘In defence of diversity’. But if I am in favour of diversity, I am most certainly critical of multiculturalism. I have long argued that while we should value diversity as a form of lived experience, we should scorn multiculturalism as a political policy. So, as a complement to my defence of diversity, here are extracts from a series of essays and talks from over the years which sum up my critique of multicuturalism. […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, british asians, british politics, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, david goodhart, edmund burke, free speech, immigration, integration, multiculturalism, muslims, rushdie affair

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

FROM THE VAULTS: A DEBATE ON ‘WHO SPEAKS FOR ME?’

April 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for a week, so I thought I would unearth some more old material from the vaults, this time debates in which I have been involved. This first is an exchange of letters with the human rights activist Tanuka Loha, currently the Human Right to Housing Program Director at America’s National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, on questions of race, identity and political representation. It is a debate that touches on many of the themes in the contemporary discussion […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, black, black identity, british politics, democracy, mult, muslims, racism, universalism