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donate Kenan Malik
is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. His books include From Fatwa to Jihad. The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy (2009) and Strange Fruit. Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate (2009).
Kenan Malik publishes many of his "writings, readings, thoughts and scribbles" on his Pandaemonium website.
Eurozine Articles
To name the unnameable
Salman Rushdie had to back out of attending the 2012 Jaipur Literature Festival because of an assassination threat against him. The lack of support for Rushdie shows that the defence of free speech is no longer seen as an irrevocable duty, writes Kenan Malik. [more]
The last crusade
The claim that Christianity embodies the bedrock of European cultural values simplifies both the history of Christianity and the roots of modern democracy, argues Kenan Malik. Ironically, the defenders of "Christendom" draw on the same politics of identity as Islamists and multiculturalists. [more]
The tragic ironies of Breivik's terror
The irony is not just that Breivik's hatred of Islam should lead to a horror that many took to be Islamic, but also that nothing so resembles Breivik's mindset as that of an Islamist jihadist, writes Kenan Malik. Both use the language of the "clash of civilizations" to justify their atrocities. [more]
Multiculturalism at its limits?
Managing diversity in the new Europe
Multiculturalism, the default strategy in western Europe for managing cultural diversity, is increasingly under attack from both Right and Left. If multiculturalism has reached its limits, what are the alternatives that can help manage diversity, both in the East and in the West? [Hungarian version added] [more]
A Merkel attack on multiculturalism
In Germany as in Britain, the consequence of multiculturalist policies was social fragmentation, argues Kenan Malik. But a critique of multiculturalism should not be confused with the current wave of political attacks on immigrants and immigration. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Society without solidarity
Were the riots in the UK a political upheaval of the poor? No, says Kenan Malik, the riots were not protests in any way. Instead they revealed that a second kind of poverty stalks Britain: moral poverty. The UK has become a nation of isolated individuals. [more]
Test-tube truths
Prominent American atheist Sam Harris argues that science can replace theology as the ultimate moral authority. Kenan Malik is sceptical: "The desire to look either to God or to science to define moral values is a desire to set moral values in ethical concrete." [more]
How to become a real Muslim
The media has colluded with self-promoting but marginal Muslim clerics to create a cycle of self-reinforcing myths around the Mohammed cartoons. The fear of causing offence undermines progressive trends in Islam and strengthens the hand of religious bigots. [more]
Shadow of the fatwa
Salman Rushdie's critics lost the battle but they won the war against free speech, writes Kenan Malik. The argument at the heart of the anti-Rushdie case - that it is morally unacceptable to cause offence to other cultures - is now widely accepted. [more]
Mistaken identity
Multiculturalist advocacy of collective rights opens the door for religious law to take precedence over civil law, argues Kenan Malik. Partly responsible is the idea that people are bearers of a particular culture as opposed to social and transformative beings. [more]
Free speech in a plural society
Opening address at the 19th European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Multiculturalist censors turn the notion of respect on its head, said Kenan Malik as he opened the Eurozine conference. In a truly plural society we need the fullest possible extension of free speech. [more]
Say what you think
It is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others, says Kenan Malik. Without that, society would be less progressive and alive. [more]
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