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Kenan Malik

Kenan Malik

The Guardian

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Left silences right, right silences left. But censorship stops us pushing for change

Two conferences in two European cities. Two attempted bans (though only one successful). Two different responses from politicians and the media. All...

sunday 60

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Riz Ahmed’s Defiance: how the visceral racism of 70s Britain gave way to a new era of identity politics

I can still remember the chill I felt on first hearing of the murders of Parveen Khan and her three young children, Aqsa, Kamran and Imran. It was...

14.04.2024 20

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

What a teacher in hiding can tell us about our failure to tackle intolerance

Three years ago, on 25 March 2021, a teacher from Batley Grammar School (BGS) in West Yorkshire was forced into hiding after a religious studies...

31.03.2024 10

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Plundered and corrupted for 200 years, Haiti was doomed to end in anarchy

In December 1914, the USS Machias dropped anchor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Eight US marines disembarked, sauntered to the Banque National de la...

16.03.2024 7

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Elon Musk v OpenAI: tech giants are inciting existential fears to evade scrutiny

In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, HG Wells published a novel about the possibilities of an even greater conflagration. The World Set Free ...

10.03.2024 70

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Blurring the line between criticism and bigotry fuels hatred of Muslims and Jews

Where do we draw the line between criticism and bigotry? From the uproar over Lee Anderson’s remarks about the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, being...

03.03.2024 50

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Sunderland may not be like London, Cynthia Erivo, but neither is it like the Britain of old

‘A day out of Sunderland is a day wasted.” So claimed Charlie Slater, council leader in the 1970s, and a man known as “Mr Sunderland” to...

25.02.2024 40

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

A century on from Rhapsody in Blue, debates about cultural ‘theft’ rage still

‘The future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original...

18.02.2024 20

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a perversion of history

William Zuckerman was born in 1885 in the Pale of Settlement, that part of the Russian empire to which Jews were largely confined, a place of poverty...

11.02.2024 200

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

What a legendary historian tells us about the contempt for today’s working class

It is not often that, as a teenager, you get captured by a 900-page tome (unless it has “Harry Potter” in the title). Even less when it is a dense...

04.02.2024 200

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

‘British homes for British workers’ is an empty, century-old, xenophobic slogan

‘Not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for the foreign invaders.” “They can’t get a home for their...

28.01.2024 30

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Amid class prejudice and sensitivities over race, Rochdale’s abused girls were failed

‘Child 44” was raped by many men over a long period of time, eventually forced to have an abortion, aged 13. None of her abusers was charged with...

21.01.2024 4

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

What makes a very British miscarriage of justice? Contempt for the ‘little people’

‘It was a scandal hiding in plain sight.” “The result of a series of choices, the sum of state neglect and corporate wrongdoing.” “Most...

14.01.2024 7

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Claudine Gay’s ousting reveals that the messenger is still an easier target than the message

For some, she is the wretched epitome of the liberal elite; for others, the victim of a “racist mob”. She herself condemns her critics for having...

07.01.2024 6

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

The conflict between history and memory lies at the heart of today’s cultural divides

The difference between the study of history and the construction of public memory, the American historian Arno Mayer observed, is that “whereas the...

31.12.2023 70

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

A culture of greed, riddled with inequality. Global football is a mirror of our age

Nadine Dorries or Jacob Rees-Mogg? Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk? Uefa or the European Super League? Yes, sometimes life seems like a succession of...

24.12.2023 20

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

The Reith lectures miss the point. Politics fails when it avoids the issue of class

‘Solidarity has to come through class.” So insisted Rollie, a member of the audience in the latest of the Reith lectures, given this year by...

17.12.2023 10

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

The west’s dumping of migrants on poor countries is a grisly echo of penal transportation

Imagine that Britain signs a treaty with France agreeing to take its unwanted migrants for cash payment; that France suggests sending lawyers to this...

10.12.2023 80

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Solidarity with Palestinians is not hate speech, whatever would-be censors say

An award ceremony for the Palestine-born novelist and essayist Adania Shibli is cancelled by the Frankfurt book fair because of “the war started by...

03.12.2023 40

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

AI doesn’t cause harm by itself. We should worry about the people who control it

At times it felt less like Succession than Fawlty Towers, not so much Shakespearean tragedy as Laurel and Hardy farce. OpenAI is the hottest tech...

26.11.2023 60

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

‘There is no alternative’ is the last resort of those defending morally wrong acts

‘But what is your alternative?” It’s an important question in political debates when a particular policy or action is being challenged. It can...

19.11.2023 50

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Across the globe, compassion for migrants has given way to cruel, performative politics

On Wednesday, the UK supreme court will give its verdict on the Rwanda deportation scheme. The decision will clearly have a major impact on those who...

12.11.2023 60

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

In the Middle East, as in Greek tragedy, justice must prevail over moral absolutism

Watching the tragedy unfold in Israel and Palestine has sometimes felt like reading the Oresteia backwards. A trilogy of plays by Aeschylus, written...

05.11.2023 5

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Hamas’s barbarism does not justify the collective punishment of Palestinians

‘T hey too have casualties, they too have captives and they have mothers who weep … Let’s make real peace”. Not a liberal peacenik speaking...

15.10.2023 8

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Getting rich in order to give to the poor? The jury’s out, but it seems morally shaky

‘F ew people think of finance as an ethical career choice,” William MacAskill observes. But they should. “By making as much money as we can and...

08.10.2023 20

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Suella Braverman’s bigoted attack on multiculturalism shouldn’t blind us to its problems

‘H as multiculturalism failed?” It is a debate that raged a decade ago but had seemed to have faded into the political background in recent years....

01.10.2023 6

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Forty years ago, class defined us in Britain. Now it’s we who define our class

A liberal elite out of touch with the conservative instincts of the British people. A political realignment defined by an electorate more culturally...

24.09.2023 30

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

What a brawl in a Peckham shop tells us about race and class in Britain today

A customer demands a refund on goods she bought but no longer wants. The shop owner refuses, offering a credit note instead. The customer grabs other...

17.09.2023 40

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

Our retreat from Christianity doesn’t mean we’ve lost our sense of morality

A shape less recogni sable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was...

10.09.2023 30

The Guardian

Kenan Malik

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