History Speaks

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal is joined by Dr. Akif Tahieev to explore a topic that rarely appears in mainstream scholarship: Shia Muslim communities in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Together, they discuss who these communities are, how they live and practice their faith, and why their stories have been overlooked in both Islamic studies and European studies. From questions of...

In this episode of  History Speaks , Dr. Roshan Iqbal sits down with Dr. Martin Nguyen, author of  Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination , to explore what it means to imagine a “Muslim Malcolm X.” Together, they discuss how Malcolm’s faith shaped his vision of justice, community, and how retelling his story from the vantage point of his religious imagination...

In this episode of  History Speaks , Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with Dr. Santiago Slabodsky, who holds the Florence and Robert Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and directs the Jewish Studies program at Hofstra University. Drawing on his award-winning book  Decolonial Judaism: Triumphal Failures of Barbaric Thinking , Dr. Slabodsky explores the erasure of the Judeo-Islamic tradition and the inv...

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with Dr. Sarra Tlili, author of Animals in the Qur’an , a groundbreaking work—translated into Arabic—that has reshaped scholarship on Islam, ethics, and the environment. Together, they explore her thesis that the Qur’an is theocentric and not an anthropocentric text and what this means for how we understand creation and ourselves. This epi...

In this episode of History Speaks, I talk with Dr. Natalie Khazaal, Associate Professor in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech. Drawing from her research, we explore how racism, speciesism, and cultural bias are embedded in animated films and how they shape what audiences learn about difference and belonging. We also discuss the MARS test, an original intervention Dr. Ghazaal developed,...

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with  Dr. Younus Mirza , founding director of the Barzinji Institute for Global Virtual Learning at Shenandoah University, about his recent book  The Islamic Mary . Together, they explore Maryam/Mary in the Qur’an, Hadith, Sufi thought, and the broader Muslim imagination. The conversation concludes by highlighting how significant Maryam/Ma...

In this episode of History Speaks , Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with Dr. Elliot Bazzano , Associate Professor at Le Moyne College, about Islamophobia, the election of Zohran Mamdani, and what his success means for U.S. Muslims. Together, they unpack the roots and impact of Islamophobia, tracing how it shapes both public perception and everyday Muslim life. Their conversation situates Mamdani’s rise wi...

In this episode,  Dr. Roshan Iqbal  speaks with  Dr. Saba Fatima , Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, about her new book, A Brief Guide to Shia Islam: Beliefs, Practices, and Exemplars. Together, they explore the core tenets, rich traditions, and influential figures of Shia Islam in a conversation designed to be accessible and engaging. This episode offers a warm...

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal talks with Dr. Shabana Mir, Associate Professor of Anthropology at American Islamic College and author of the award-winning book  Muslim American Women on Campus . Drawing from rich ethnographic research, Dr. Mir explores how Muslim women navigate elite U.S. university spaces while negotiating the pressures of visibility, belonging, and religious...

What does it mean to act with nobility in the face of certain loss? In this episode of History Speaks, host  Roshan  Iqbal speaks with Dr.  Cyrus  Ali Zargar, Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida, about his powerful new book The Ethics of Karbala . Whether you’re familiar with Karbala or learning about it for the first time, this episode invite...

In this episode of History Speaks , Roshan Iqbal is joined by Celene Ibrahim, Oludamini Ogunnaike, and Younus Mirza to explore distinct fasting practices and their inner and outer dimensions in Islamic scholarship, especially focusing on Al-Ghazali’s seminal book, Inner Dimensions of Islamic Practice. Part of a series designed as a classroom resource and a primer for lay audiences, this episode pr...

n this episode of History Speaks, Roshan Iqbal speaks with Cyrus Zargar on the role of storytelling and virtue ethics in the work of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, the 13th-century jurist, philosopher, poet, and polymath. The conversation delves particularly into the virtue of ‘compassion’ within the context of the story ‘The Tale of the Sufi and the Judge,’ from Maulana Rūmī’s magnum opus, the Mathn...

In this episode of History Speaks, Tazeen M. Ali speaks with Edward E. Curtis IV about his recent book,  Muslims of the Heartland : How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (NYU Press, 2022) . They discuss the often-forgotten history of early Arab Muslim migration to the United States, the racialization of Islam, and mythmaking narratives that paint the American Midwest as homogen...

In this episode of History Speaks, Tazeen Ali speaks with Aria Nakissa about his recent book,  The Anthropology of Islamic Law: Education, Ethics, and Legal Interpretation at Egypt’s al-Azhar   (Oxford University Press, 2019). They discuss shifting pedagogical approaches to Islamic education, modes of reading religious texts, and the relationships between knowledge and ethics in Islamic law and mo...

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with Dr. Celene Ibrahim and Dr. Hadia Mubarak on Gender as a lens to study the Qur’an, Muslim feminism, its contributions and challenges, the limits and role of texts, and questions of power and authority in academia, among other topics.

In this episode of History Speaks , I speak with Oludamini Ogunnaike and Sara Abdel-Latif about the self and society in Sufi thought from it’s early formative period in Nishapur to the early modern and contemporary Sufi movements in West Africa. We discuss Sufi conceptions of the self as dynamic and fluid, the role of the paradox in Sufi thought, and the subversion and authorization of hierarchies...

In this episode of History Speaks, I speak with Matthew Steele and Mahmood Kooria about the Islamic legal traditions in Africa, South and Southeast Asia.  We discussed the life of legal texts as they traveled across the Afro-Asian world, the construction of the center and peripheries in the study of Islamic law and the role of local languages in scholarly communities and the writing of legal texts...

In this episode, I speak with Pernilla Myrne and Laury Silvers about the limits of historical sources, the methods historians employ to uncover the lives of the marginalized in society, and the role of the imaginative as a space for giving voice to the silenced. Sources cited in the episode: Abdel-Latif, Sara. “ Narrativizing Early Mystic and Sufi Women: Mechanisms of gendering in Sufi hagiographi...