Author: Kenan Malik

I am a writer, lecturer, broadcaster. I have presented Analysis, on BBC Radio 4, and Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3’s wonderful arts and ideas programme. I was until this year a panelist on The Moral Maze, also on Radio 4. I have written and presented a number of radio and TV documentaries including Disunited Kingdom, Are Muslims Hated?, Islam, Mullahs and the Media, Skullduggery and Man, Beast and Politics.

My latest book is The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics, published by Atlantic. Previous books include Multiculturalism and its Discontents: Rethinking Diversity After 9/11 (Seagull, 2013), From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy (Atlantic, 2009 ), Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate (Oneworld, 2008), Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us About Human Nature (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000) and The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society (Palgrave, 1996). From Fatwa to Jihad was shortlisted for the 2010 Orwell Prize while Strange Fruit was on the 2009 Royal Society Science Book Prize longlist.

July 25, 2017 /

‘All politics is identity politics.’ And ‘Without identity politics there can be no defence of women’s rights or the rights of minority groups.’ So run the two most common contemporary defences of identity politics. As criticism of the politics of identity has become more developed and fierce, so has the defence. So, I want here to begin a critique the critique, as it were, and in so doing reassert the necessity for challenging identity politics.