Faisal Devji: The Militant and the Mahatma

Faisal Devji, one of the world's most acclaimed theorists of militant Islam, comes to the ICA to argue that a close reading of alleged 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohamed's hearing transcript while in captivity in Guantanamo Bay bears comparison with Gandhi's famous trial for sedition in 1922. Both the modern Islamic militants and the mahatma, he will argue, rely upon the caliphate to re-imagine the world, and a comparison of their ideas can teach us a great deal. Faisal Devji is associate professor of history at The New School for Social Research in New York and author of Landscapes of the Jihad.

Afterwards, Devji will be in conversation with Akmal Asghar, senior member of radical Islamic political organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Yahya Birt, writer and commentator on Islam. Chair: Roger Hardy, Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst, BBC World Service.