News & events

During the project, this page will be updated with news updates and events organised as part of the research project.

The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution

🗓️ 30 April 2026

📍Online

📚 The second instalment of our "Genealogies of Islam and Humanitarianism” seminar series features Basit Iqbal. Professor Iqbal will discuss his recent book, The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham University Press, 2025). Drawing upon extensive fieldwork, Dread Heights traces the transnational trajectories of Muslim giving within the Syrian diaspora. In addition to Western frameworks of humanitarianism, Iqbal considers how giving animates religious imaginations that arise against the backdrop of war, displacement, and migration.

Basit Kareem Iqbal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University. An anthropologist and longtime academic editor, his research explores the difficulty of the present within and across distinct traditions and forms of life. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Critical Times and History of the Present as well as on multiple professional association steering committees.