kenan
malik
.com

This is an archive of my work including books, broadcasts, essays, reviews, papers, talks, interviews and debates, together with reviews of my work and discussions of my ideas. There is also a biog and a bookshop.

My latest book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy was shortlisted for the 2010 George Orwell Book Prize. The US edition has now been published by Melville House. You can read the Introduction as well as reviews of the book.  You can also listen to it as an audiobook.

My last book, Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate was longlisted for the Royal Society 2009 Science Book of the Year Prize. Read the Foreword and the reviews.

Use the scroller on the left to see details of the most recent articles on this site and a diary of my forthcoming broadcasts and talks.  Pause the scroller by moving your mouse over it.

You can contact me by email, visit me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. You can also subscribe to the rss feed and to my FeedBurner email list which provides updates both of the latest articles and of upcoming talks and boadcasts.

kenan malik

Kenan Malik


'a most accomplished writer'
Roy Porter


'clear, sharp and eloquent'
Mary Midgley


'three cheers for
Malik's rationalism'
New Scientist


'few targets escape his
forensic intelligence'
Observer


'we need more people
like him'
Financial Times

 

 

 

 

US edition
out now


From Fatwa to Jihad ((US edition)

"Gripping...
The Rushdie affair has shaped all our lives.
This book shows us how."

Hanif Kureishi






From Fatwa to Jihad

"Riveting political history... Impeccably researched, brimming with detail, yet razor-sharp in its argument"

Lisa Appignanesi
Independent






From Fatwa to Jihad

"An important intervention in the debate on freedom of expression"

Monica Ali






From Fatwa to Jihad

"Enthralling"

Robert McCrum
Observer






From Fatwa to Jihad

"Terrific"

Bryan Appleyard
Sunday Times








"Valuable and sophisticated"

Theodore Dalrymple
City Journal








"An admirable piece of reportage... subtle and intelligent"

Stuart Kelly
Scotsman








"Seldom can a book have had a more searing relevance to contemporary events"

Lindsay Johns
New Humanist








"Scalpel-sharp"

Saif Shahin
Mail Today








"Detailed and arresting"

Sudeep Paul
Indian Express








"Elegant...
A necessary book"

Nazneen Khan-Østrem
Aftenposten










"During the Cold War, the faultlines that divided the world were broadly ideological. Today, as the philosopher Tzvetan Todorov observes in his new book The Fear of Barbarians, the world is structured not so much by ideology as by emotion, and in particular the emotions of fear and resentment. The idea of the ‘clash of civilization’ has become a means through which to express that sense fear and resentment, a way of understanding notions of belongingness and enmity in emotional rather than ideological terms."

'The clash of civilizations at Ground Zero'
Göteborg-Posten
21 August 2010









"The Haitian slaves rose in rebellion on 24 August 1791. In the space of twelve years, they ‘defeated in turn the local whites and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British expedition of some 60,000 men, and a French expedition of similar size under Bonaparte’s brother-in-law.’ ‘The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day, is’, James observes, ‘one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement.’"

Review of The Black Jacobins
by CLR James
normblog,
17 August 2010









"There is a willfull shallowness about this work, a refusal to think deeply or to pose difficult questions, that is truly shocking. Insofar as it is provocative, The Quest for Meaning seeks to provoke not through the excess of its rhetoric but through the banality of its reasoning. What Ramadan has produced here is a faith-lite manual for those seeking multicultural pieties. "

Review of The Quest for Meaning
by Tariq Ramadan
Independent
13 August 2010









"Many people fear a science that seems to disturb their moral compass, upsetting traditional ideas of humanity and nature. The worry about scientists ‘playing God’ is not simply a religious concern. It expresses a secular fear too: the belief that nature embodies certain verities, and that these verities define boundaries that we transgress at our peril. "

Hype, fear and Synthia
Göteborg-Posten
10 July 2010










25 September 2010
'Multicultural Politics'
Göteborg Book Fair
Swedish Exhbition and Congress Centre
Mässans gata 20
Korswägen
Gotëborg
14.00


Discussion with Dilsa Demirbag-Sten, Maria Leissner and Qaisar Mahmood. Tickets and details from the Gotëborg Book Fair.










3 November 2010
The Moral Maze
BBC Radio 4
20.00


The other panelists are Michael Portillo, Melanie Phillips and Claire Fox.