Tag: religion

THE PLACE OF FAITH IN A SECULAR SOCIETY

December 4, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on whether religious views have a place in secular political debate, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 1 December 2024, under the headline “Who should have the last word on assisted dying in a secular Britain?” For many years, I used to give an annual lecture to theology students training to be Anglican priests at Trinity College, Bristol, on “Why I am an atheist”. One perennial response from the students was that “without belief in God, […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: assisted dying, atheism, blasphemy, faith, kim leadbetter, lord falconer, religion, secularism, shabana mahmood, tahir ali

DIVERSITY DEBATES AND THE TWO DIFFERENT BRITAINS

December 8, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the census data and the debate about diversity data in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published 4 December 2022, under the headline “White Britons are declining and immigrants help prop up Christianity. Does it matter?” Ten million people living in England and Wales were born abroad. Fewer than half of Britons call themselves Christians. For some, the two main takeaways from the 2021 census for England and Wales – a more diverse nation and a more secular […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, census, christianity, conservatism, diversity, douglas murray, ngozi fulani, nigel farage, racism, religion, white decline

ON STORIES AND THEIR AMBIGUITIES

December 30, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Milton, Phillip Pullman and the ambiguities of stories, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on strikes in France.) It was published on 29 December 2019, under the headline ‘From Milton to Pullman, the quest for truth is riddled with ambiguity’. ‘A poem is not a lecture; a story is not an argument. The way poems and stories work on our minds is not by logic, but by their capacity to […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Human • Tags: areopagitica, blake, christianity, his dark materials, human nature, john milton, paradise lost, philip pullman, religion, the fall

RELIGIOUS FAITH AND FAITH IN HUMANITY

April 2, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 1 April 2018, under the headline ‘Yes, we’ve lost our faith in God, but we’ve lost our faith in reason too’. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. So runs the inscription above the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Through those gates walks Dante with his guide Virgil: Now sighs, loud wailing, lamentation Resounded through the starless air, So that I too began to weep. Unfamiliar tongues, horrendous accents, Words of suffering, cries of rage, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: catholicism, christianity, dante, hell, human agency, humanism, inferno, pope francis, religion, the divine comedy, viktor frankl

SO, WHAT DO BRITISH MUSLIMS REALLY THINK?

April 12, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This Wednesday, Channel 4 in Britain will broadcast a Trevor Phillips documentary on ‘What British Muslims really think’. On Sunday, the Sunday Times published details of an ICM poll about Muslim attitudes commissioned for the programme and ran an essay by Phillips on Muslim integration. The headlines generated by the poll – ‘Half of British Muslims want gay sex banned says poll’; ‘Most Muslims would not give terror tip-offs’, etc – and Phillip’s argument (‘the integration of Muslims will probably […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain • Tags: british asians, britishness, islam, islamophobia, muslims, religion, trevor phillips

WHY DO JIHADIS SEEM SO EVIL?

November 22, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This article on why jihadis seem willing to commit acts that appear so depraved or evil was published in the Observer under the headline ‘Why do Islamist groups in particular seem so much more sadistic, even evil?’ The day before the Paris carnage, two suicide bombers killed at least 40 people in a Shia district of Beirut. The week after, two suicide bombings of street markets in Nigeria killed 49 people. Faced with such atrocities, we can often do little […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, evil, identity politics, islamism, jihadism, morality, religion, western policy

FROM THE ARCHIVES: KAUFMANN ON RELIGION

August 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my series of old book reviews that I am publishing while I am away in South Africa, here is my review of Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, originally published in the Observer, 1 May 2010. Review of Eric Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the 21st Century Observer, 1 May 2010 Europe, 2020. The Islamists have stormed to power right across the continent. No English pub can sell alcohol. Every French woman […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books • Tags: demography, eric kaufmann, islam, mark steyn, religion, secularism

A CATHEDRAL, A MOSQUE, A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

May 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels on 10 May 2015 on ‘The many roots of Christian Europe, the many sources of the Islamic world’. It was part of a series of talks to accompany an exhibition of ‘The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art’ entitled ‘L’Empire du Sultan’. I want to begin this talk in two cities at opposite ends of Europe – Córdoba and Istanbul. Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral is one of […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History • Tags: christianity, clash of civilizations, cordoba, enlightenment, europe, greek philosophy, hagia sophia, ibn rushd, islam, istanbul, jonathan israel, monotheism, muslim philosophy, muslim rationalism, ottoman empire, radical enlightenment, religion, socrates

ON SCIENCE, MORALITY AND BEING HUMAN

March 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part in a discussion at the Cambridge Science Festival last week on ‘The science of morality’. Others taking part were Ray Tallis, Pater Cave and Alasdair Coles. I have here mashed up my introductory and concluding comments. Every year, I give a lecture to theology students on why I am an atheist. It is essentially a primer on why we don’t need God to explain the universe or to ground morality. And in talking of morality, I take […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: atheism, human nature, humanism, morality, religion, sam harris

UNITED AGAINST ABORTION

February 4, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This week the High Court in Belfast granted a judicial review of Northern Ireland’s abortion law. The 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised abortion in England, Scotland and Wales – or, to be more precise, provided a legal defence for those carrying out the operation in certain circumstances – specifically excluded Northern Ireland from its provisions. Today, abortion is legal in Northern Ireland only if a woman’s life is at risk or if pregnancy would have an adverse effect on her […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Women • Tags: 1967 abortion act, abortion, britain, ireland, northern ireland, religion, women's rights

RADICAL ISLAM AND THE RAGE AGAINST MODERNITY

January 28, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article on ‘Radical Islam, Nihilist Rage’ published last month in the New York Times. Faced with a horror such as the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and staff by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as ‘inhuman’ or ‘medieval’. What made the massacre particularly chilling, though, is that it was neither. The killings were all too human and of our time. The Peshawar massacre may have been particularly abhorrent, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, boko haram, frantz fanon, islam, islamic state, islamism, left, pakistan, religion, taliban

RADICAL ISLAM, NIHILIST RAGE

January 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the New York Times is on radical Islam and about what acts such as the massacre of school children in Peshawar by the Taliban tell us about Islam and about radicalism. Here are the opening paragraphs; you can read the full version in the NYT. Faced with a horror like the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and school staff members by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as ‘inhuman’ or ‘medieval’. What made […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-imperialism, islam, islamism, religion, taliban, western policy

RIGHT AND WRONG IN THE MODERN WORLD

December 25, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Better than a sermon on Xmas day… a discussion of the history of morality, and of the state of contemporary moral thinking, with Philip Petit and Natasha Circa on Australia’s ABC Radio. http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2014/12/sea_20141220.mp3 For more discussions on morality see my talks on ‘Where do values come from’ at London’s RSA and ‘Without a moral safety net’ at the Glasgow Aye Write Festival. Or just get my book, The Quest for a Moral Compass. The image is a […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: greek philosophy, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, modernity, morality, religion

REVIEWING THE QUEST

December 2, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a round-up of the latest reviews of The Quest for a Moral Compass. On my Books page are all the reviews so far. You can buy the book from the Pandaemonium bookshop in Britain and the USA. Jonathan Israel New Humanist, Winter 2014 There could be no more daunting intellectual task than setting out to write a history of moral thought from the ancient Greeks until now. Yet there is no neater way of combining philosophy, religion, intellectual […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: christianity, enlightenment, history of moral thought, islam, jonathan israel, kenan malik's books, marxism, morality, radical enlightenment, religion

ON MORALITY AND MORALISM

October 27, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my introductory comments to a discussion about moralism at the recent Battle of Ideas conference. The other discussants were Hannah Dawson and Alister McGrath. Every year I give a lecture to a group of theology students – would-be Anglican priests, in fact – on why I am an atheist. Part of the talk is about values. And every year I get the same objection: that without God, I can simply pick and choose which values […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: elizabeth anscombe, enlightenment, harriet martineau, humanism, modernity, moralism, morality, positivism, radical enlightenment, religion, sam harris, talks