Tag: muslims

THE FACTS, THE MYTHS AND THE FRAMING OF IMMIGRATION

March 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

At the heart of the current debate about immigration are two issues: the first is about the facts of immigration, the second about public perception of immigration. The facts are relatively straightforward. Immigration is a good and the idea that immigrants come to Britain to live off benefits laughable. Immigrants put more money into the economy than they take out and have negligible impact on jobs or wages. An independent report on the impact of immigration commissioned by the Home Office […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-semitism, british politics, david goodhart, immigration, muslims, racism

THE MYTHS OF MUSLIM RAGE

September 26, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Joseph Anton, has hit the bookshelves just as the world has become embroiled in a new controversy over Islamic sensibilities. The extraordinary violence unleashed across the Muslim world by Innocence of Muslims, an obscure US-made video, has left many bewildered and perplexed. Rushdie was, of course, at the centre of the most famous confrontation over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. The publication in 1988 of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, launched a worldwide campaign against the […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: arab spring, free speech, innocence of muslims, islam, islamism, joseph anton, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

GHOSTS OF JOSEPH ANTON’S PAST

September 16, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton is published tomorrow. (Joseph Anton, for those who don’t know, was the name that Rushdie adopted during his years in hiding, a name borrowed from two of his favourite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov.) Joseph Anton is not simply a memoir; it is a vital piece of social history. It is Rushdie’s first real account of the years under the shadow of the fatwa, the story from the inside of a changing world. I will review […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: bradford, free speech, hanif kureishi, islam, islamism, joseph anton, muslims, my beautiful laundrette, penguin books, peter mayer, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, sher azam, spycatcher, the satanic verses, william nygaard

MULTICULTURALISM – THE BROADCAST

June 24, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My Milton K Wong lecture, ‘What’s wrong with multiculturalism?’, that I gave in Vancouver earlier this month, was broadcast on CBC on Friday. I have already posted the transcript of the talk, in two parts, here and here. (The broadcast has been slightly edited to fit the CBC schedule; the transcript is in full.) There is a Milton K Wong website dedicated to discussion and debate around the themes of the talk.

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: anders breivik, british asians, british politics, broadcasts, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, danish cartoons, europe, far right, french politics, germany, guest workers, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, riots, rushdie affair, turkish migrants

BABUR (NOT JUST) IN LONDON

June 14, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My name is Mo, short for Mohammed, I’m a second-generation immigrant cliché: Twenty-eight, disenfranchised, well educated. My mother is white, but I’m all Paki. My father owns a corner shop where I work, And I owe my allegiance to global Umma. My nation’s the Republic of Islam. So sings Mo, one of four would-be suicide bombers in a new opera Babur in London. Opera it may be, The Marriage of Figaro it ain’t. Babur in London explores issues of culture, identity, terrorism and history by […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: babur in london, islam, islamism, jeet thayil, music, muslims, opera

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MULTICULTURALISM? [PART 2]

June 7, 2012 by Kenan Malik

This is the second part of the transcript of my Milton K Wong lecture that I delivered in Vancouver last week. I posted the first part earlier this week. The talk will be broadcast in full on 22 June on the CBC’s Ideas strand. The story I have told so far is of a Europe that is not as plural as many imagine it to be, and of immigrants less assertive of their cultural identities than they are claimed to be. Multicultural policies emerged not because […]

Categories: Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: anders breivik, behzti, british politics, clash of civilizations, cultural diversity, danish cartoons, diversity, europe, far right, handsworth riots, isaiah berlin, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, riots, rushdie affair, will kymlicka

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MULTICULTURALISM? [PART 1]

June 4, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave the Milton K Wong lecture in Vancouver on Sunday. I very much enjoyed the event- it was a stunning venue, a superb audience and a good discussion of the issues. My thanks to the Laurier Institution, University of British Columbia and CBC for inviting me. Entitled ‘What is Wrong with Multiculturalism? A European Perpective’, the lecture pulled together many of the themes about immigration, identity, diversity and multiculturalism of which I have been talking and writing recently. It was […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: british asians, british politics, britishness, christopher caldwell, europe, french politics, germany, guest workers, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, parekh report, racism, turkish migrants

LLOYD NEWSON IN DEFENCE OF ‘CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?’

May 28, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Back in March I published a review of DV8’s extraordinary show Can We Talk About This?. I was both positive and critical of the show. It was I wrote, ‘unmissable theatre’, both ‘thought provoking and gut-wrenching, food for mind and heart’ and ‘the kind of bold, polemical spectacle that the theatre so badly needs’. Its weakness, I suggested, was as a polemic: The ambition of the show, and its willingness to stomp all over the debate, is its great strength; its […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: dv8, free speech, geert wilders, lloyd newson, multiculturalism, muslims, ray honeyford

THREE MYTHS OF IMMIGRATION

May 8, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I am giving the Milton K Wong Lecture in Vancouver in June. Entitled ‘What’s Wrong with Multiculturalism? A European Perspective’, it will try to explain to a Canadian audience, for whom multiculturalism has a very different meaning than it does to a European one, the contours of the European debate, as well as my disagreements with both sides. In particular I want to show why both multiculturalists and many of their critics (particularly their rightwing critics) buy into the same […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: british asians, british politics, britishness, christopher caldwell, europe, french politics, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racial science, racism, secularism, tariq modood

WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT THIS

March 18, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Actually, I seem to have been talking about this for much of the past two decades; ‘this’ being free speech, multiculturalism, Islam, Islamism, the issues at the heart of DV8’s extraordinary new show Can We Talk About This? now playing at London’s National Theatre. Lloyd Newsom’s company has, for more than quarter of a century, blurred the lines between dance and theatre as a way of, in the company’s own words, ‘reinvesting dance with meaning, particularly where this has been […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: cultural diversity, dance, danish cartoons, dv8, free speech, geert wilders, islamism, martin amis, multiculturalism, muslims, ray honeyford

GETTING OFFENSIVE WITH NIHAL

February 26, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Another video (or rather audio) that I had not realised was online. I had been invited to Nihal’s show on the BBC’s Asian Network for a two-minute spot to promote the Festival of South Asian Literature, at which I was speaking. I ended up staying an hour debating free speech, multiculturalism and the giving of offence.

Categories: Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: british asians, britishness, broadcasts, free speech, identity politics, islamism, multiculturalism, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie

FREE SPEECH AND DOUBLE STANDARDS

February 22, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I have written an essay for the upcoming 40th anniversary issue of Index on Censorship that explores the changing character of the free speech debate in recent decades. It includes an interview with Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, whose challenge to cartoonists to depict the Prophet Muhammad helped launch the Danish cartoon controversy. I will publish the essay in full when the new issue of Index comes out in March. But here is a short extract that probes the question […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: ayaan hirsi ali, danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, geert wilders, islam, islamism, liberal hypocrisy, liberties, locke, martin amis, milton, muslims

SAYING IT LIKE IT IS WITH HANIF KUREISHI

February 19, 2012 by Kenan Malik

For no reason other than that I had never realised this video was online, here is my conversation with Hanif Kureishi at last year’s Festival of Asian Literature in London, in an event entitled ‘Saying It Like It Is: Culture, Free Speech and Power.’ And here, too, is the essay I wrote, at the time of that conversation, about my debt, and that of my generation, to Kureishi’s writing.

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: british asians, britishness, free speech, hanif kureishi, identity politics, islamism, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, rushdie affair

BEYOND THE SACRED

January 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I gave a talk called ‘Beyond the sacred’, on the changing character of ideas of the sacred and of blasphemy, at a conference on blasphemy organised this weekend by the Centre for Inquiry at London’s Conway Hall on Saturday. Here is a transcript. To talk about blasphemy is also to talk about the idea of the sacred. To see something as blasphemous is to see it in some way as violating a sacred space. In recent years, both the notion […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: behzti, blasphemy, charles taylor, free speech, identity politics, islamism, jesus and mo, kolokowski, liberties, muslims, olivier roy, religion, rushdie affair, sacred, salman rushdie, ziauddin sardar

NO OFFENCE

January 12, 2012 by Kenan Malik

As students at University College London prove that there is nothing about which someone can’t find something to take offence, Jesus and Mo show how to create a world that might suit our oh-so-sensitive souls:

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, jesus and mo, muslims