Abstract forthcoming,

Iqbal Akhtar is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University. His interdisciplinary research examines the existential questions of contemporary religious, political, and cultural identity through the disciplines of history, anthropology, political science, and linguistics. He is the founding director of Western Indian Ocean Studies program (WIOS) at FIU as well as the director of Jain Studies. He has focused primarily on religious communities of Indian descent in East Africa and more recently on the Shia shrine cities Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.