History Speaks EP9 | Karbala and Nobility | Roshan Iqbal with Cyrus Ali Zargar

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 invites you to reflect on the enduring power of principled resistance.

Dr. Roshan Iqbal hails from a small hamlet of 20 million–Karachi, Pakistan. She received her PhD in Islamic Studies from Georgetown University. Prior to this she read for her MPhil at the University of Cambridge. She has studied in Pakistan, the US, Morocco, Egypt, Jordon, the UK, and Iran. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in the Qur’an, Islamic Law, Film and Media Studies, and modern Muslim intellectuals. Her recent book is titled, ‘Marital and Sexual Ethics in Islamic Law: Rethinking Temporary Marriage.’ As an associate professor at Agnes Scott College, she teaches classes in the Religious Studies department and also classes that are cross-listed with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Film Studies. When she is not working, she loves talking to her family and friends on the phone (thank you, unlimited plans), tracking fashion (sartorial flourishes are such fun), watching films (love! love! love!), reading novels (never enough), painting watercolors (less and less poorly), and cooking new dishes (sometimes successfully).

Dr. Cyrus Ali Zargar is the Endowed Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor in Islamic Studies. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies in 2008. Dr. Zargar’s research interests include Classical Sufism, Islamic Philosophy, Arabic and Persian Sufi Literature, and Ethics in Literature and Film. Dr. Zargar is currently completing a book titled Religion of Love: Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. 1221) and the Sufi Tradition for the Islamic Texts Society. This monograph considers space, time, and praxis in the Persian Sufi poetry of ʿAṭṭār, focusing on the development of sacred symbols. His most recent book, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism, was published in December of 2017.