History Speaks

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal speaks with Dr. Deanna Ferree Womack, Associate Professor of History of Religions and Interfaith Studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, about her new book Re-inventing Islam: Gender and the Protestant Roots of American Islamophobia (Oxford University Press, 2025). Together they trace how Anglo-American Protestant missionaries, through texts, images, and material culture, reshaped ideas about Islam and Muslim women across four centuries — and how those inherited narratives still echo in American Islamophobia today. The conversation asks a question that reaches beyond the book itself: why do we see others the way we do, and what would it take to see differently?The Rev. Dr. Deanna Ferree Womack is Associate Professor of History of Religions and Interfaith Studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. She teaches courses on Christian-Muslim relations, interreligious dialogue, and Middle Eastern Christianity. From 2022 to 2025 she directed Candler's Master of Arts in Religion and Leadership program, and she served from 2015 to 2020 as director of the Leadership and Multifaith Program (LAMP), established with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. Womack came to Candler from Princeton Theological Seminary, where she earned her MDiv, ThM and PhD. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

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 identity and conversion to the impact of recent conflicts, this conversation opens a window onto a world many listeners may not know exists.

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 invention of the “Judeo-Christian” West. Together, they discuss how colonialism, epistemic dominance, and modernity have shaped the way we understand history, power, and religion. The conversation invites us to reconsider what was lost with the disappearance of the Judeo-Islamic world — and what might be recovered when we imagine history beyond Europe's frame.

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 episode is dedicated, with Dr. Tlili's permission, to the life and legacy of Jane Goodall.

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, with two other colleagues, to analyze these biases in media and animation. Our conversation is framed by a larger question: how does animation reflect and reinforce societal prejudices, often without viewers even noticing? We consider how creative choices, protest, and advocacy can challenge these narratives. Ultimately, we ask: what does it mean to see - and be seen - accurately in stories meant for everyone?

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/Mary is, how often her legacy is overlooked, and how much untapped potential it holds for Muslim spirituality and interfaith dialogue.

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 within a broader history, one shaped by the quiet labor of parents, elders, and countless famous and not-famous Muslim figures who have sustained their communities with resilience and care. They end by reflecting on why Mamdani's achievement holds such symbolic and personal significance for Muslims across the United States. Elliott Bazzano is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College, where he teaches courses on Islam and comparative religion. Professor Bazzano's research focuses on the interplay of Qur'anic interpretation, polemics, and mysticism as well as identity and pedagogy in religious studies scholarship. He co-edited Varieties of American Sufism (SUNY Press, 2020) with Marcia Hermansen. His article “Normative Readings of the Qur'an: From the Premodern Middle East to the Modern West,” appears in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2016) and “Muslim in the Classroom: Pedagogical Reflections on Disclosing Religious Identity” in Teaching Theology in Religion (2016). Bazzano published two articles in Religion Compass (2015) on Syrian polymath Ibn Taymiyya, “Ibn Taymiyya Radical Polymath, Part I: Scholarly Perceptions” and “Ibn Taymiyya, Radical Polymath, Part II: Intellectual Contributions.” He has authored a book chapter, “Research Methods and Problems,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies (2013, 2015), and has forthcoming chapters on Qur'an interpretation, dating, and Islamic dietary guidelines Islam in Five Minutes (Bloomsbury, 2024). Bazzano serves at co-chair on the Steering Committee for the Study of Islam Section in the American Academy of Religion. In addition to finding inspiration in the mystical percolations of the Sufis, including coffee (pun intended), he finds his deepest wonder and joy in the miracle of his two daughters who offer him limitless possibilities for contemplating the mysteries of the universe.   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).

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 and informative introduction for students and curious listeners alike, inviting deeper understanding and appreciation of one of Islam's majortraditions. Dr. Roshan Iqbal Dr. Saba Fatima Dr. Saba Fatima (pronounced Subb/a  Fath-ma) is a Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her work primarily explores the intersections of feminism, race theory, and contemporary Islamic thought. With a focus on issues of social justice, gender, and identity, Fatima's scholarship offers nuanced perspectives on the lived experiences of marginalized communities, particularly Muslim women in Western societies. Her writings often challenge conventional paradigms, advocating for a more inclusive and empathetic understanding of cultural and religious diversity. In addition to her academic publications, she is an engaging speaker and educator, dedicated to fostering dialogue and critical thinking in both scholarly and public spheres. She was also the host of the podcast, She Speaks: Academic Muslimahs.

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 identity. We discuss everything from drinking culture and modesty to dating, politics, and what it means to be unapologetically Muslim in a space that often demands compromise. Their conversation is framed by a larger question: what does it mean to belong when your presence is always marked? And what can a win like Zohran Mamdani's tell us about shifting narratives in American public life?

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.

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 provides valuable insights into a foundational topic.

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 Mathnawī-i Maʿnawī (“The Rhymed Couplets of Spiritual Signification”). 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). Cyrus Ali Zargar is Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. Zargar's research interests focus on the metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical intersections between Sufism and Islamic philosophy. His first book, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in Ibn ʿArabi and ʿIraqi, was published in 2011 by the University of South Carolina Press. His most recent book, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism, was published in 2017 by Oneworld Press. His forthcoming book concerns Sufi ethics and the theme of self-transformation in the corpus of the Persian poet ʿAṭṭār.

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 homogenously white. They also discuss Curtis' wide-ranging scholarship on Islam in America, as well as his book and documentary, Arab Indianapolis. Tazeen M. Ali is a scholar of Islam and gender in the United States and assistant professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (New York University Press 2022). Edward E Curtis IV is a publicly-engaged scholar of Muslim American, African American, and Arab American history and life. He is the William M. an

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 more broadly in both religious and secular educational settings.

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 Sufi pedagogy.Sara Abdel-Latif is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. She specializes in Sufism, Gender and Qur’anic Interpretation.Oludamini Ogunnaike is an Assistant Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia specializing in the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of West African Sufism and Yoruba oriṣa traditions. He received his PhD in African and African American studies and Religion at Harvard University. He is the author of Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Madīḥ Poetry and its Precedents (Islamic Texts Society, 2020) and Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions (PSU Press, 2020).

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 hagiographies,” Routledge Handbook of Sufism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.Jones-Rogers, Stephanie. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave-Owners in the American South. Yale University Press, 2019.Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.Nguyen, Martin. Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ContributorsPernilla Myrne is an Associate Professor of Arabic Literature and History at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has published on the representation of women and women as creative agents in pre-modern Arabic literature, including the monograph Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World (IB Tauris, 2020), history of emotions and slavery. Her current research explores the manuscript traditions and reception of medieval Arabic sex advice manuals, aiming at looking into attitudes to sexuality in the medieval Islamic world.Laury Silvers is a retired historian of early Sufism and the lives and practices of early pious and mystic women who writes historical mysteries set in the time and place of her research. Follow her on Twitter @waraqamusa and explore her website for the historical background of the novels and audio readings. The first two of her historical mysteries The Lover and