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.

You can take a peek at the Introduction to my new book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy, as well as read reviews of it.

My last book, Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate has just been longlisted for the Royal Society 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

Out now!




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

Hanif Kureishi








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

Lisa Appignanesi
Independent








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

Monica Ali








"Enthralling"

Robert McCrum
Observer








"Terrific"

Bryan Appleyard
Sunday Times








"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










"What is often called offence to a community is actually a conversation or debate within that community. It is not the job of arts administrators to decide who can speak or what they can say. It is their job, rather, to encourage, as best they can within an artistic setting, that conversation to flourish."

'Offending the audience'
Debate at
'All Together Now?':
British Theatre After Multiculturalism'
Warwick Arts Centre
14 June 2009







"The acceptance of the sacred does not provide an anchorage denied to atheists because that which is anchored has itself got to be defined. Neither the believer nor the atheist can avoid having to make choices about the moral values to follow and, having made those choices, to take responsibility for the consequences. Moral choices are forced upon simply because we are human, and we don’t stop being human just because we are able to imagine the sacred. "

Debate on 'imagining the sacred'
'How the Light Comes In'
Hay on Wye
31 May 2009







" This was science reborn for the age of celebrity. 'Any pop band is doing the same thing. Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.' So claimed Jørn Hurum, the paleontologist from Oslo University's Natural History Museum who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. But once scientists start acting like Madonna or David Beckham, it’s science itself that suffers."

'Pimping Ida'
New Humanist online
23 May 2009







"Once the Enlightenment becomes a weapon in the clash of civilizations rather than in the battle to define the values and attitudes necessary to advance political rights and social justice, once it becomes a measure as much of tribal attachment as of progressive politics, then everything from torture to collective punishment becomes permissible, and the pursuit of Enlightenment itself becomes a source of de-Enlightenment."

'Shadow Boxing'
New Humanist
May / June 2009







"What is most striking about the ideas now transforming India is that they challenge not just the old India but also the contemporary West. Today it is Western intellectuals who most fear the population bomb, decry economic growth, deplore consumerism, and fret about urbanization. India is confronting the West in more ways than one."

Review of Imagining India
by Nandan Nilekani
Sunday Telegraph
10 May 2009










1 July 2009
The Moral Maze
BBC Radio 4
20.00


With Melanie Phillips, Claire Fox, Clifford Longley and myself.








8 July 2009
The Moral Maze
BBC Radio 4
20.00


With Michael Portillo, Claire Fox, Clifford Longley and myself.

Strange Fruit

Longlisted for the
Royal Society Prize for Science Books, 2009


'Challenging and provocative'
Royal Society panel


'Three cheers for Malik's rationalism'
Ian Hacking, New Scientist


'Essential reading'
Andrew Anthony, Observer


'Lucid and important'
Steven Cave, Financial Times


'A nicely provocative
and stylish polemic'
Steven Poole, Guardian

Buy
the
book