The Inheritance of ISIS

While the Islamic State marks in many ways a radical departure for Muslim militancy, it continues to draw upon many of the themes and concerns that have preoccupied Islamists in particular for many decades now. This lecture will focus on the way in which ISIS has taken over and transformed a long-standing debate on sovereignty not only among Islamists, but also in modern politics more generally.

The modern concept of state or popular sovereignty has always posed a problem for anarchists and libertarians as much as for Muslim militants, who regard it as a form of oppression that in addition negates the sovereignty of God. How then might one construct a society in which sovereignty was in effect absent or relegated to the deity? It is in part to answer this question that the Islamic State formulates its unprecedented order of violence, whose meaning, therefore, goes well beyond the inexplicable or atavistic forms of cruelty it appears to manifest.

This promises to be a fascinating discussion. Attendees will of course have the chance to ask questions at the end of the talk.

Dr Faisal Devji is from the University of Oxford

Tickets are £5