Tag: secularism

HOW TO BE SECULAR [PART 2]

October 29, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Jacques Berlinerblau, whoses book How to be Secular I reviewed in my last post, took umbrage on Twitter at my characterisation of his argument as anti-democratic. Twitter is not the best medium to have nuanced debate on these kinds of issues, but it was an interesting discussion (the heart of which was a debate not so much about secularism as about democracy) so I have curated the tweets via Storify (slightly reordered to make better sense of the discussion), with some comments thrown in. I hope, however that Jacques […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, democracy, religion, religious freedom, secularism

HOW TO BE SECULAR? PERHAPS NOT

October 27, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Back at the beginning of the US Presidential campaign Mitt Romney accused Barack Obama of launching ‘a war on religion’ and of wanting ‘to establish a religion in America known as secularism’. The irony is that Obama himself, even before entering the White House, had made clear his own disdain for secularism. In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama had chided fellow Democrats for equating ‘tolerance with secularism’. In embracing secularism, he wrote, Democrats ‘forfeit the moral language that […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, locke, new atheism, religion, religious freedom, secularism

ON THE SECOND COMING OF RELIGION

October 4, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My essay on ‘The Myths of Muslim Rage’ sparked a debate about the relationship between religion and politics. Many challenged the idea that the conflicts over The Satanic Verses two decades ago, and over the Innocence of Muslims now, find their roots as much in political conflict as in religious belief. ‘Regardless of who may have been “pulling the strings” and for what reasons’, as one critic put it in commenting on the essay, ‘the fact that those strings can […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: alister mcgrath, atheism, charles taylor, darwin, fundamentalism, identity politics, islam, islamism, linda woodhead, marx, nietzsche, nilufer gole, olivier, paul heelas, religion, return of religion, secularism

NOTES ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

June 17, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Given the degree of fractious debate recently over ‘religious freedom’ – from questions of blasphemy and ‘defamation’ to the storm over gay marriage, from the controversy over the banning of the burqa to the hostility directed at the ‘Obamacare’ plan to include contraception in health insurance cover – I have been rethinking the question of freedom of religion. These notes are a starting point for debate, not a fully-fleshed out argument. 1 Religious freedom occupies a special place in contemporary political […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: christianity, equality, ethics, free speech, gay rights, locke, religion, religious freedom, secularism, spinoza

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

FROM STREETFIGHTERS TO BOOKBURNERS

March 30, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week I published an extract from my book From Fatwa to Jihad, that told the story of how the Asian Youth Movements were created in Britain in the 1970s. This second extract explains how the British state and religious conservatives joined forces to marginalise secular radicals in the name of multiculturalism. This is the story of how Bradford came to be painted green. The same story could be told about towns all over Britain. In the summer of […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: asian youth movement, black identity, bradford, britain, british asians, From Fatwa to Jihad, identity politics, kenan malik's books, multiculturalism, racism, secularism

HERE TO STAY, HERE TO FIGHT

March 28, 2012 by Kenan Malik

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary this week by Zaiba Malik on the history of the Asian Youth Movements. For many of us who grew up in 1970s and 1980s, the AYMs were a central feature of our lives. Radical and secular, the movements challenged both the vicious racism that defined Britain in that era and many traditional values too, helping to establish an alternative leadership in Asian communities that confronted the conservatives on issues such as the role of […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: asian youth movement, black identity, britain, british asians, identity politics, kenan malik's books, racism, secularism

THE MYTHS OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE

October 20, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I wrote some notes a few months back on Pandaemonium on Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe‘. I reworked that post into an essay, which has now been published in the latest issue of New Humanist. And I’m posting it here, too. UPDATE: The original post (which is much longer than this essay) won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utøya earlier this year were the first […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anders breivik, aquinas, christianity, christopher caldwell, dark ages, enlightenment, eurabia, greek philosophy, human nature, jonathan israel, judaism, judeo-christian tradition, modernity, muslim rationalism, original sin, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, western civilization

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 9]: MARTIN LUTHER’S ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTION

October 14, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, we have reached Chapter 10, which looks at the Renaissance and the Reformation and at the impact of both on moral philosophy. This excerpt is about Martin Luther’s theology and about the ambiguities of the Reformation, an intensely conservative religious reaction against the spirit of reason that Aquinas had introduced into Christianity that was nevertheless also the source of a radically libertarian revolution, the harbinger […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History of moral thought • Tags: anabaptists, christianity, diggers, euthyphro dilemma, kenan malik's books, levellers, martin luther, morality, protestantism, reformation, religion, renaissance, secularism, theology, william ockham

GOD, THE UNIVERSE AND A BACON SARNIE

October 10, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The latest strip from the irrepressible Jesus and Mo may seem like a typical dig at the inconsistencies and illogicalities of religious faith. But, in its own inimitable way, it taps into one of the most difficult theological conumdrums for believers. A common argument in the increasingly tedious ‘God Wars’ is the claim by believers that atheists are naive about religious belief. They read holy books too literally and think of God as an old man with a white beard. […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, atheism, christianity, god, jesus and mo, morality, muslim rationalism, new atheism, religion, sam harris, secularism, terry eagleton, theology, via negativa

FIVE BOOKS ON MORALITY WITHOUT GOD

September 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I was asked by the The Browser, a wonderful, indispensable website that trawls the web and fishes out some of the best writing, to choose, for its ‘Five books’ section, five books (naturally) on morality without God. Here’s my somewhat eclectic list and the interview that accompanies it. Many believers think that the only way to be truly moral is to follow a religion which teaches us morality. How would you respond? One of the great selling points of religions – […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: al-ma'arri, arab literature, camus, dostoevsky, enlightenment, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, god, greek philosophy, human agency, humanism, islam, jonathan israel, plato, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 8]: DANTE, POET OF THE SECULAR

September 18, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 9, a chapter that explores medieval Christian thought, and in particular the work of Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of Christian theologians. Western Christendom had recently rediscovered Aristotle, largely through translations from the Muslim world. Aquinas found in Aristotle both a reason for, and a means to, transform the traditional relationship between reason and faith in Christian theology. For Augustine and […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, augustine, christianity, dante, divine comedy, ethics, god, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, morality, muslim rationalism, original sin, poetry, religion, secularism, sin, virtues

DO WE NEED MORALITY?

September 7, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The philosopher Joel Marks caused a stir recently with an essay in the New York Times. Called ‘Confessions of an ex-moralist’, the essay explained how Marks had come to realize that there is nothing objective about morality and that moral choices are simply subjective preferences: A friend had been explaining to me the nature of her belief in God. At one point she likened divinity to the beauty of a sunset: the quality lay not in the sunset but in […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: amoralism, ethics, jean katz, moral nihilism, religion, russell blackford, sam harris, secularism

SPINOZA, LOCKE AND THE BATTLE OVER TOLERATION

August 27, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In my recent post on ‘Rethinking the idea of Christian Europe’, I mentioned the debate between the Radical and the mainstream Enlightenment, a debate superbly explored by Jonathan Israel in his books Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested. The mainstream Enlightenment of Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume is the one of which we know and which provides the public face of the Enlightenment. But it was the Radical Enlightenment, shaped by lesser-known figures such as d’Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet and, in particular, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: atheism, christianity, enlightenment, free speech, freedom of worship, jonathan israel, liberties, locke, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza, tolerance

RETHINKING THE IDEA OF ‘CHRISTIAN EUROPE’

August 19, 2011 by Kenan Malik

UPDATE: this post won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Behring Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utoøya were the first shots in a war in defence of Christian Europe. Not a religious war but a cultural one. Breivik acknowledged that he was not religious but, he wrote in his manifesto in a section entitled ‘Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom’: Myself and many more like me do not necessarily […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, christianity, christopher caldwell, clash of civilizations, dante, dark ages, enlightenment, ethics, eurabia, god, greek philosophy, jesus, jonathan israel, judaism, judeo-christian tradition, liberalism, modernity, muslim rationalism, muslims, original sin, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, stoicism, universalism, western civilization