Tag: the satanic verses

COMING SOON…

September 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My 2009 book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy will be published in a new edition next February. It will have an extended (12,000 word) Afterword to bring it up to date. It will also have a new subtitle – How the World Changed From The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo. I will provide more details closer to the time. In the meantime, here is an extract from the Preface to the new edition: From the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: assimilationism, charlie hebdo, france, free speech, From Fatwa to Jihad, islamic state, jihadism, kenan malik's books, multiculturalism, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

OF ANGELS AND DEVILS, OF MONSTERS AND MYTHS

February 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A new edition of my book From Fatwa to Jihad will be published next year, for which I am writing an Afterword to bring the story up to date. So, it seemed a good time to repost two videos I made about the current book for Faculti, a website that publishes videos of authors and academics talking about their work. The first film is a reading from the final section of From Fatwa to Jihad, the second an exploration of the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik • Tags: free speech, islam, islamism, kenan malik's books, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

BACK TO BRADFORD FOR AN OLD DEBATE

June 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

A Dutch TV company, VPRO, is making a documentary about the Rushdie affair, partly using my book From Fatwa to Jihad as a template. And as part of the documentary it wanted a ‘renunion’ between myself and Sher Azam, the president of the Bradford Council of Mosques in the 1980s and the man who organized the torching of The Satanic Verses at the end of the famous demonstration in January 1989. I was not at the demonstration, but shortly afterwards went […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Free Speech • Tags: bradford, equality, free speech, gay marriage, islam, liberalism, liberties, religious freedom, rushdie affair, sher azam, the satanic verses

FEAR AND FREE SPEECH

December 19, 2014 by Kenan Malik

When Sony announced that it was withdrawing its film The Interview after threats from hackers, my first thought was ‘Thank God Sony was not the publisher of The Satanic Verses.’. Not because there is any direct analogy between the Salman Rushdie affair and l’affair Sony. Still less because I think The Interview is an important film, or in any sense comparable to Rushdie’s novel – from what I can gather I would rather spend two hours at a dentist than […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: censorship, free speech, penguin, peter mayer, rushdie affair, sony, the interview, the satanic verses, wendy doniger

DO I WANT PEOPLE TO SHUT UP?

December 5, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Anshuman Mondal, a lecturer in English at Brunel University, recently published an article on the academic website The Conversation criticising arguments for free speech. Advocates of free speech, of which I was a key specimen, were, Mondal claimed, trying to ‘shut up’ those who disagreed with them: By advocating blind adherence to the principle of free speech instead of accepting the ethical responsibilities attendant upon free speech, people like… Malik undermine the moral agency on which freedom rests. By dismissing other […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anshuman mondal, behzti, censorship, exhibit b, free speech, morality, the satanic verses

ON THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER

November 13, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In October 1985, four members of the Palestinian Liberation Front seized a cruise liner, the Achille Lauro, in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Egypt. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, the hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then held in Israeli prisons. They failed to achieve their demands. But, in a vicious and seemingly inexplicable act, the hijackers murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a retired, wheelchair-bound Jewish-American businessman, shooting him in the forehead and chest, then forcing the ship’s barber […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: anti-semitism, free speech, islam, israel, john adams, music, nakba, opera, palestine, salman rushdie, terrorism, the death of klinghoffer, the satanic verses

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

IN THE SHADOW OF THE FATWA

February 14, 2014 by Kenan Malik

When he was a child Salman Rushdie’s father read to him ‘the great wonder tales of the East’ – the stories of Scheherazade from the Thousand and One Nights; the animal fables of the ancient Indian Panchatantra; ‘the marvels that poured like a waterfall from the Kathasaritsagara’, the famous 11th-century Sanskrit collection of myths; the ‘tales of the mighty heroes collected in the Hamzanama’ that tell of the legendary exploits of Amir Hamza, uncle to the Prophet Mohammed; and the ancient […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: free speech, From Fatwa to Jihad, identity politics, liberalism, milton, peter mayer, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses, wendy denier

ANGELS AND DEVILS, MYTHS AND MONSTERS

February 1, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was recently interviewed by Faculti, a superb website that publishes videos of authors and academics talking about their work. I discussed my book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. Here are the two recordings from the Faculti interview. The first is a reading from the final section of From Fatwa to Jihad in which I argue that The Satanic Verses is not as most people imagine it to be; Salman Rushdie’s novel is not a critique […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Kenan Malik • Tags: From Fatwa to Jihad, kenan malik's books, rushdie affair, salma, the satanic verses

AN ESSAY ON THOMAS PAINE (JUST A LITTLE BIT CENSORED)

June 24, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In my talk on pluralism and the giving of offence, I mentioned my 1994 essay on Thomas Paine that had been censored by the Independent because I opened it with a quote from The Satanic Verses. Here is that essay, in the form in which it was finally published. And this is the quote from The Satanic Verses that was felt to be too offensive. It describes the moment that Salman, the scribe who writes down the revelations that Mahound receives from […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: christianity, edmund burke, enlightenment, free speech, offence, religion, rushdie affair, the satanic verses, tom paine

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

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

‘OF DEBATE, OF DISPUTE, OF DISSENT’

September 20, 2012 by Kenan Malik

When he was a child Salman Rushdie’s father read to him ‘the great wonder tales of the East’ – the stories of Scheherazade from the Thousand and One Nights, the animal fables of the ancient Indian Panchatantra, ‘the marvels that poured like a waterfall from the Kathasaritsagara’, the famous 11th-century Sanskrit collection of myths, the ‘tales of the mighty heroes collected in the Hamzanama’, that tell of the legendary exploits of Amir Hamza, uncle to the Prophet Mohammed, and the […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: free speech, iran, islam, islamism, joseph anton, midnight's children, peter mayer, 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

HERE WE GO AGAIN

September 14, 2012 by Kenan Malik

One thing should be clear. The violence across the Muslim world in response to an American anti-Islamic film has nothing to do with that film. Yes, The Innocence of Muslims is a risibly crude diatribe against Islam. But this obscure film that barely anyone had seen till last week is no more the source of the current violence than God is the source of the Qur’an. The details of the rioting in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador and sparked […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: danish cartoons, free speech, islam, islamism, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, the satanic verses