OUTRAGE! OUTRAGE! OH, LET ME BE OUTRAGED!
I gave a talk on Wednesday night to the Studienbibliothek in Hamburg. Entitled ‘Left, Right and Islamism’ the talk explored the ways in which the responses of both left and right to Islamism have...
View ArticleBEYOND THE SACRED
I gave a talk called ‘Beyond the sacred’, on the changing character of ideas of the sacred and of blasphemy, at a conference on blasphemy organised this weekend by the Centre for Inquiry at London’s...
View ArticleSAYING IT LIKE IT IS WITH HANIF KUREISHI
For no reason other than that I had never realised this video was online, here is my conversation with Hanif Kureishi at last year’s Festival of Asian Literature in London, in an event entitled ‘Saying...
View ArticleGETTING OFFENSIVE WITH NIHAL
Another video (or rather audio) that I had not realised was online. I had been invited to Nihal’s show on the BBC’s Asian Network for a two-minute spot to promote the Festival of South Asian...
View ArticleHERE TO STAY, HERE TO FIGHT
BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary this week by Zaiba Malik on the history of the Asian Youth Movements. For many of us who grew up in 1970s and 1980s, the AYMs were a central feature of our lives....
View ArticleFROM STREETFIGHTERS TO BOOKBURNERS
Earlier this week I published an extract from my book From Fatwa to Jihad, that told the story of how the Asian Youth Movements were created in Britain in the 1970s. This second extract explains how...
View Article‘CONFLICTING CREDOS BUT THE SAME VISION OF THE WORLD’
This is a transcript of the first part of the talk I gave last week as part of the Criticise This! seminar in Ulcinj, Montenegro on ‘Rethinking the Question of Difference’. (The second part of the talk...
View ArticleI AM TRIBAL ABOUT SPORT, NOT PATRIOTIC ABOUT BRITAIN
How times change. There I was sitting in the Olympic stadium with my daughter. She had red, white and blue braids in her hair and was enthusiastically waving a Union Jack. When I was her age I would...
View ArticleON THE SECOND COMING OF RELIGION
My essay on ‘The Myths of Muslim Rage’ sparked a debate about the relationship between religion and politics. Many challenged the idea that the conflicts over The Satanic Verses two decades ago, and...
View ArticleA FOX DOES NOT MAKE A GOOD PROTECTOR OF THE HEN COOP
The Canadian government is in the process of setting up an Office of Religious Freedom. Religious freedom is about the right of people to hold certain beliefs, and to act upon them, so long as in so...
View ArticleMYTHS OF RADICALISATION
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...
View ArticleWHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘INTEGRATION’?
Last month, I reviewed David Goodhart’s book The British Dream which explores, in the words of its subtitle, the ‘successes and failures of post-war immigration’. Goodhart, I suggested, ‘touches on...
View ArticleIN DEFENCE OF DIVERSITY
There has recently been built in Merton in south London a ‘mega mosque’ that has inevitably become the focus of much controversy. In his book The British Dream, David Goodhart, director of the...
View ArticleIN THE SHADOW OF THE FATWA
When he was a child Salman Rushdie’s father read to him ‘the great wonder tales of the East’ – the stories of Scheherazade from the Thousand and One Nights; the animal fables of the ancient Indian...
View ArticleEUROPE’S NEW FAULTLINE
The Front National is expected to win next week’s European election in France; UKIP may well do so in Britain. Both parties combine a visceral hostility to immigration with an acerbic loathing of the...
View ArticleWHO DO I THINK I AM?
In 2009, London’s Wellcome Collection conducted a series of interviews about the meaning of identity, to coincide with its exhibition Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives, part of an Identity Project...
View ArticleHOW I’VE COME TO PASS THE CRICKET TEST – BUT NOT TO BE A PATRIOT
This is my latest column for the New York Times, on ideas of Britishness, belonging and identity. (We had to cut the essay slightly because of the space available; I will publish the full version next...
View ArticleFROM THE ARCHIVES: ILLUSIONS OF IDENTITY
As I am away for a couple of weeks, I am plundering the archives. This is the second in a series of old book reviews on the themes of race, difference and identity material that I have not previously...
View ArticleFROM THE ARCHIVES: BETWEEN CAMPS
Continuing to plunder the archives while I am away, this is the third in my series of old book reviews on the theme of race, identity and difference. It is a review of Paul Gilroy’s Between Camps and...
View ArticleANTI-POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF HATRED
This is my latest column for the International New York Times, published under the headline ‘Enough Hate for Everyone’. A few years ago, I was a guest on Start the Week, a BBC radio discussion show....
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