Check out the following event passed along by Professor Aviv!
Please join us on Thursday, February 20 at 5pm in the Marvin Center, Room 307 for the 2020 Berz Lecture: “Islam in India and Pakistan: From the First Conquests to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)”
Speaker: Dr. Shankar Nair, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Abstract: As the still young Islamic empire spread into the lands of India, Muslims encountered, for perhaps the first time, a grand-scale religious civilization entirely unmentioned in the Qur’an or in the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. With so little explicit guidance from their scriptural sources, how were Muslims to navigate this new land or make sense of the incredibly diverse Hindu populations of South Asia? Though one might have expected Muslims to reject Hindus outright as mere idolaters and unbelievers, the historical response was surprisingly nuanced and accommodating. As modern nationalist forces in the region threaten to overturn this legacy, this talk surveys the often forgotten history of Islam in South Asia, offering insights into how the region arrived at the crises it faces today.
