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The Old Women of Nishapur Initiative on Gender, Knowledge and Religion

Invites you to a public talk by

Basit Iqbal (McMaster University)

To the Threshold of Capacity: Tribulation and Ambivalence in Zaatari Camp

Monday March 18^th, 12:30-2:00 PM

Peterson Hall 108

Co-sponsored by The 鲍鱼直播 Refuge Research Group, The Department of Anthropology and the Institute of Islamic Studies

See attached poster.

Abstract: Freed from the Assad regime鈥檚 obsessive control of religion, displaced Syrians in Zaatari Refugee Camp pursue sharia studies. They refuse the lure of resettlement or restoration, developing instead an extensive program of study. These teachers and students relate their pursuit of religious knowledge to the existential question of their own individual and collective capacities. In doing so they underscore the essential opacity of human experience. This lesson, at once anthropological and theological, leads away from conventional affirmations of refugee agency or resilience. This lesson demands admitting the heteronomous conditions of existence. They call this: fate.

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Basit Kareem Iqbal is assistant professor of anthropology (and associate member of religious studies) at McMaster University. Based on fieldwork in Jordan and Canada with refugees, relief workers, and religious scholars, his current book manuscript is titled 鈥淭he Dread Heights: Refuge and Tribulation after the Syrian Revolution.鈥� His previous publications have appeared in Critical Times, diacritics, Political Theology, Muslim World, Anthropologie et soci茅t茅s, the Journal of Religion, Anthropological Theory, and Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, among others.

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Prof. Iqbal will also hold a discussion seminar on Tuesday March 19, at 9am. If you are interested in participating in the seminar, write to setrag.manoukian [at] mcgill.ca

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