The 2026 Ibn Rushd Annual lecture was delivered by Rana Dasgupta, author of acclaimed new book ‘After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a New World Order’ at the Artworkers’ Guild central hall, Bloomsbury, central London.
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? 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 annual 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.
At the event the Muslim Institute also launched our Community Empowerment Fund 2026, and an accompanying new report on Birmingham’s Muslim communities. Go to our Community Empowerment Fund webpage and find out how you can apply to the fund, and download the report.
Biography: 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. His 2009 novel, Solo won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
In 2014 his book Capital: The Eruption of Delhi was published. It is an exploration of the turbulent transformation of that city following India’s 1990s economic boom. It weaves historical context with interviews ranging from billionaire tycoons to slum dwellers, highlighting massive inequality, real-estate speculation, and the social trauma lingering from the Partition.
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”, in the Guardian newspaper, for a new conception of human political organization. Expanding on this theme, his latest book, After Nations (2024), describes four crises of the contemporary nation-state (“God”, “Money”, “Law”, “Nature”) and presents a path to a fairer and more peaceful global future.
Rana now resides in France.
Video by Robert Hoang
Photos by Rehan Jamil
