Kenan Malik

When Prospect magazine chose Kenan Malik as one of its 25 “World’s Top Thinkers” of 2024 with “ideas for a world on the brink”, it observed that “Not all readers will agree [with him]. But that is the point: Malik is someone worth disagreeing with.” That is the spirit in which Malik writes his Observer column, too.

Malik’s columns seek to do three things. First, to put public discussions into a wider social and historical frame, so allowing the reader to move beyond the immediacy and shallowness of many debates. Second, in contextualising a debate, they also repose the questions at the heart of it, allowing us the look at the issues from a different perspective, and to ask different questions about them. And third, while written from a determinately leftwing perspective, the columns challenge the prejudices of both left and right.

The three articles here illustrate these themes. “In the Middle East, as in Greek tragedy, justice must prevail over moral absolutism” brings the works of Aeschylus to bear upon Israel’s war in Gaza. He uses the Greek playwright’s dramatised story, in the Oresteia trilogy, of the development of human society from the seeking of revenge to the promotion of justice to suggest that the opposite has been happening in Gaza. In so doing Malik challenges the arguments of both sides in the war.

In “Blurring the line between criticism and bigotry fuels hatred of Muslims and Jews”, Malik confronts the hypocrisy in discussions both of antisemitism and Islamophobia (and questions the very use of the latter term) while showing how to challenge bigotry against Muslims and Jews without losing sight of the importance of free speech.

In “Defending working-class interests requires more than simply opposing immigration”, Malik turns on its head the argument that restricting immigration is necessary to improve working class lives by asking “What other policies should we expect critics of immigration to endorse if they are genuine in their belief that their aim is to defend working-class interests?” and showing that most “critics of immigration suddenly lose interest in improving working-class lives when it comes to wider social policies.” Malik reposes the debate about immigration and working class interests by revealing the hollowness at the heart of the critics’ arguments.

What Malik’s columns show is the possibilities of being polemical while also nuanced, a rare combination.