Tag: war on terror

OSMAN KAVALA AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF HOPE

May 21, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the imprisonment of Osman Kavala and what it signals about repression in Turkey, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Meghan Markle and why making inherited privilege more ‘diverse’ is not cause for celebration.) It was published in the Observer, 20 May 2018, under the headline ‘In Erdoğan’s warped world, even intellectuals are now “terrorists”‘. Imagine a seminar in London. Around the table are Blairites and Corbynistas, […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, War on terror, International • Tags: war on terror, free speech, britain, turkey, erdogan, osman kavala

ON THOSE ‘DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS’

June 5, 2017 by Kenan Malik

In her speech outside No 10 Downing Street on Sunday morning in response to the London Bridge attack the night before, Theresa May insisted that ‘enough is enough’. ‘We cannot’, she said, ‘pretend that things can continue as they are.’ There is ‘far too much tolerance of extremism in our country’. Rooting out extremism ‘will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations’. It was a speech long on rhetoric, but short on sense. It is May herself, first as Home […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: british politics, free speech, islamism, jihadism, saudi arabia, terrorism, theresa may, war on terror

BETWEEN RAGE AND TERROR

September 7, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on the nature of comteporary terror. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline These Days of Rage. On July 14, Bastille Day, in Nice, France, 85 people died after being mowed down on the promenade by a man driving a truck. Four days later, […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: angela merkel, france, germany, islamism, jihadism, terrorism, war on terror

COUNTER-TERROR POLICY: THE MYTHS AND THE FAILURES

March 30, 2016 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on why ‘radicalization’ is a flawed concept. It was published under the headline ‘The Little We Know About the Jihadists in Our Midst’. The evidence suggests that the concept is flawed and that such anti-jihadist measures are ineffective, even counterproductive. A secret British government memorandum leaked in 2010 dismissed the idea that there was ‘a linear ‘conveyor belt’ moving from grievance, through radicalization, to violence’. A 2010 American […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: counter-terrorism, islam, islamism, jihadism, marc sageman, radicalization, war on terror

AFTER THE VOTE, THREE QUESTIONS

December 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Parliament voted on Wednesday to extend British airstrikes to targets in Syria. Within hours, British Tornados had taken off on new missions inside Syria. I am writing a longer piece on some of the issues raised that will be published soon. In the meantime, three questions for both sides of the debate (Yes, the questions are largely rhetorical and I hope to address some of these issues over the coming week): . 1 By any rational account, Britain’s decision to extend […]

Categories: Politics, War on terror • Tags: british politics, islamic state, kurds, syria, terrorism, war on terror, western policy

EXTREMISM AND THE LAW

October 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Back in 2008, I gave a talk at an Index on Censorship conference on ‘Extremism and the Law: Free Speech in an Age of Terror’ in which I suggested that: One of the most significant shifts in recent years has been the mutation of the notion of ‘extremism’ from being a description of a political claim to being a quasi legal term. From the BNP to Hizb ut-Tahrir to Buju Banton’s homophobic lyrics, to label speech as extremist is to label it […]

Categories: Free Speech, War on terror • Tags: censorship, counter-extremism, free speech, war on terror

WHY NO OUTRAGE OVER YEMEN?

July 13, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Sophia Dingli is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Hull. In this article she questions why Western commentators, who have been vocal about the Israel’s attack on Gaza and the brutality of IS, have been so silent about the conflict in Yemen. It was first published in The Conversation. Sophia Dingli More than 2,800 people are dead in Yemen – so why aren’t we outraged? In the summer of 2014, our screens were inundated with videos of […]

Categories: International • Tags: saudi arabia, war on terror, western policy, yemen

BRITAIN’S DANGEROUS TRIBALISM

July 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

From ‘Britain’s Dangerous New Tribalism’, my latest column for the International New York Times: This exodus to Syria has led non-Muslims to point an accusing finger at Muslim communities. Last month, the prime minister, David Cameron, condemned those who, though not violent, ‘buy into’ the prejudices of Islamism and ‘quietly condone’ the actions of the Islamic State. A poll published last week found that 56 percent of Britons thought that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy, a figure […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, british politics, identity politics, islam, islamism, multiculturalism, war on terror

THE MONSTER THAT ISRAEL HELPED CREATE

July 17, 2014 by Kenan Malik

There is a terrible irony in Israel’s current assault on Gaza. More than 200 Palestinians have died in an onslaught supposedly aimed at weakening Hamas and degrading its capacity to fire rockets into Israel. It was Israel itself, however, that helped Hamas to power in Gaza. For more than thirty years,from the 1960s to the 1990s, successive Israeli governments viewed radical Islamism as a useful tool with which to counter the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (of which […]

Categories: International, War on terror • Tags: afghanistan, hamas, israel, muslim brotherhood, palestine, plo, war on terror, western policy

A BROTHERHOOD INQUIRY IN BAD FAITH

April 22, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my latest column for the International New York Times is on David Cameron’s inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood. The full version I will publish on Pandaemonium next month. Imagine that an elected president is ousted by the military. That the president’s party is declared a ‘terrorist’ organization. That dozens of protesters are shot in the streets, thousands of people imprisoned and hundreds sentenced to death. How should a liberal democracy respond? Presumably, by condemning the coup, denouncing the violence […]

Categories: Britain, International • Tags: arab spring, britain, democracy, egypt, islamism, muslim brotherhood, saudi arabia, war on terror, western policy

CAST OUT BEYOND THE EMBRACE OF THE LAW

April 15, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In January, the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, introduced a last-minute measure to the government’s Immigration Bill that would enable her to remove the citizenship of any terror suspects whose conduct is ‘seriously prejudicial to the interests of the UK’, even if to do so made them stateless. It is, May insisted, a necessary measure in the war on terror. An article in the New York Times last week highlighted the way that even without the new law, Britain already […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: britain, citizenship, immigration, totalitarianism, war on terror

THE WAR OF THE CYNICS

September 15, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There are two wars being fought over Syria. There is a civil war on the streets of Homs and Aleppo and Ma’loula and Damascus, a war played out in the currency of bombs and bullets and (possibly) sarin. The consequences of this war are, so far, 100,000 dead, seven million displaced and a nation turned to rubble. Then there is the war on the global stage between outside players, a war played out in the grand halls of the UN, […]

Categories: International • Tags: chemical weapons, imperialism, russia, syria, war on terror, western policy

SYRIA: MORALITY AND REALITY

September 4, 2013 by Kenan Malik

First, the British parliament rejects David Cameron’s demand for an immediate military strike on Syria. Then, Barack Obama, seemingly all set to bomb Syria, decides to postpone any action until it wins backing from Congress (which is by no means a foregone conclusion). The extraordinary flip-flops and u-turns over policy towards Syria on both sides of the Atlantic last week might seem to express the triumph of the democratic process over hasty belligerence. They speak also, however, to the confusion […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: arab spring, britain, cia, freedom struggles, imperialism, iraq, morality, syria, use, war on terror, western policy

THE MAKING OF A BRITISH JIHADI

June 6, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As a follow-up to my earlier post on ‘Myths of radicalisation’, which questioned the conventional narrative about how some Muslims get drawn to jihadism, here is an extract from my book From Fatwa to Jihad, telling the story of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombings, and of how he became a jihadi. From Fatwa to Jihad, pp 81-83, 98-104, 107-110 In the days following 7/7, thousands of journalists decamped to Beeston, a suburb of Leeds where the […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, asian youth movement, britain, british asians, ed husain, islam, islamism, mohammed sidique khan, mullah boys, terrorism, war on terror

MYTHS OF RADICALISATION

June 2, 2013 by Kenan Malik

How do we stop young Muslims becoming radicalized? That has been the question posed by many politicians, policy makers, analysts and journalists in the aftermath of the killing of Lee Rigby in Woolwich last week. Indeed, it has been the question posed ever since the 7/7 bombings first raised the issue of ‘homegrown’ terrorism. The idea of ‘radicalization’ as the process by which young Muslims get drawn into jihadist circles has become received wisdom within security forces and among politicians, […]

Categories: Britain, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, britain, identity politics, islam, islamism, liberties, marc sageman, radicalisation, terrorism, war on terror