The Muslim Institute 11th Ibn Rushd lecture.
'After Nations: Belonging'
Tuesday July 21st July, central London
RSVPAfter Nations: Belonging - by Rana Dasgupta
- Date & Time
- July 21, 2026 from 5:30PM to 9PM BST
- Location
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The Art Workers' Guild
6 Queen Square,
London WC1N 3AT
We face a crisis of belonging. Nations that once provided a meaningful sense of home are now failing to do so. Into the void pour sectarianism, mistrust and hatred – which only exacerbate the sense of anomie.
How do we break this cycle? In this lecture, Rana Dasgupta returns to the work of the great philosopher Ibn Rushd, or Averroes (1126-98) in order to find a different principle for modern life, society and politics. He shows how ideas developed in medieval Andalus can help us heal the era of fake news and weaponised knowledge.
Until recently, the system of nation states appeared settled and eternal. Not anymore. As American hegenomy unwinds and Western countries slide into anxiety and debt, there is a resurgence of tyranny, imperialism and war. It is no longer clear that states can continue delivering 'normal' services, let alone defeat inequality and climate change. What can be done to restore a sense of belonging to us all?
The 2026 Ibn Rushd Annual lecture will be delivered by Rana Dasgupta, author of acclaimed new book After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a New World Order.
Featuring
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Rana Dasgupta is a British novelist and essayist. Born in Canterbury in 1971, he studied at Balliol College, Oxford and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2001, he moved to New Delhi to write. Tokyo Cancelled, a collection of contemporary folktales, appeared in 2005. A novel, Solo (2009), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 2014 he published Capital, a non-fiction account of the changes engulfing his adopted city as a result of globalization. Capital won the Ryszard Kapuściński Award and the Prix Émile Guimet. Dasgupta’s essays and articles have appeared in Harper’s, Granta, New Statesman, Prospect, The Paris Review, the Guardian and The New York Times. In 2018, he published a manifesto (“The Demise of the Nation-State”, the Guardian, 5 April 2018) for a new conception of human political organization. His new book, After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a New World Order (2026), describes four crises of the contemporary nation-state (“God”, “Money”, “Law”, “Nature”) and presents a path to a fairer and more peaceful global future.
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Schedule
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6.00PM TO 6.15PM
Registration (doors open 5.30pm) -
Introduction by Hassan Mahamdallie, Director, Muslim Institute
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6:15PM to 7:45PM
Ibn Rushd Lecturedelivered by Rana Dasgupta and Q&A
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7:45PM -8PM
Launch: Critical Muslim 58: West -
8:00PM - 8:15PM
Launch: Muslim Institute Community Empowerment Fund. -
8:15PM-9PM
Hot Buffet -
12:00 PM
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