معرفی
Iqbal Akhtar is an Associate Professor at Florida International University (FIU) with dual appointments in the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Politics & International Relations. He is also the Director of the Jain Studies Program at FIU. His scholarly work focuses on reconstructing the religious identity of the Khōjā community across historical and postcolonial contexts, blending interdisciplinary methodologies from historiography, linguistics, and ethnology.
- Education: PhD (2012, University of Edinburgh), MA (Religious Studies, 2008), MA (Political Science, 2004), BA (Political Science, 2002)
Dr. Akhtar’s research interests revolve around Khōjā studies, Islamic political thought, and transnational histories, particularly in the Indian Ocean region. He explores the evolution of religious cosmology, caste dynamics, and the intersection of race and religion in diasporic communities.
His publications span books, journal articles, and interdisciplinary studies, including The Khōjā of Tanzania (2000), which examines the shift from Indic caste identity to Afro-Asian Muslim community. Recent works (2014–2018) analyze racial boundaries, narrative prayers, and vernacular scripts in Islamic manuscripts. He also contributes to computational linguistics in humanities education.
Dr. Akhtar collaborates with institutions like the British Library and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, organizing workshops on Indic and Gujarati Muslim manuscripts. His teaching includes courses on Islamic political thought, gender in the Quran, and South Asian international relations.
