KENAN MALIK

Freedom demands that we struggle for an extension of both equality and free expression, not regard one as inimical to the other.

Britain's anti-terror laws are an affront to democracy.

Historically, postwar black immigrants to Britain were concerned less with preserving their cultural differences than in achieving political equality. The political elite, on the other hand, has been obsessed by the question of cultural difference.

It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor. Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints.

Humans are, as Sartre put it, 'condemned to be free'. To insist that science, or God, objectively defines moral values is to abandon our responsibility as human beings to make such judgments.

9/11. For the West the attack on New York's World Trade Centre conjured up a terrifying new enemy: Islamic fundamentalism. For Muslims it appeared to open the floodgates to a new wave of hatred and discrimination. Suddenly, it seemed, racists had license to attack them, police to harass them, politicians and journalists to revile their religion.

Moral questions may not have objective answers-whether revealed by God or by science-but they do have rational ones, answers rooted in a rationality that emerges out of social need. That rationality can only be discovered through exercising the human potential for rational dialogue, the potential for thinking about the world, and for discussing, debating and persuading others. Values can never be entirely wrenched apart from facts; but neither can they be collapsed into facts. It is the existence of humans as moral agents that allows us to act as the bridge between facts and values.

Historically, postwar black immigrants to Britain were concerned less with preserving their cultural differences than in achieving political equality. The political elite, on the other hand, has been obsessed by the question of cultural difference.

Britain's anti-terror laws are an affront to democracy.

9/11. For the West the attack on New York's World Trade Centre conjured up a terrifying new enemy: Islamic fundamentalism. For Muslims it appeared to open the floodgates to a new wave of hatred and discrimination. Suddenly, it seemed, racists had license to attack them, police to harass them, politicians and journalists to revile their religion.

It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor. Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints.

Freedom demands that we struggle for an extension of both equality and free expression, not regard one as inimical to the other.

Moral questions may not have objective answers-whether revealed by God or by science-but they do have rational ones, answers rooted in a rationality that emerges out of social need. That rationality can only be discovered through exercising the human potential for rational dialogue, the potential for thinking about the world, and for discussing, debating and persuading others. Values can never be entirely wrenched apart from facts; but neither can they be collapsed into facts. It is the existence of humans as moral agents that allows us to act as the bridge between facts and values.

Humans are, as Sartre put it, 'condemned to be free'. To insist that science, or God, objectively defines moral values is to abandon our responsibility as human beings to make such judgments.