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About Iqbal Akhtar
I am Iqbal Akhtar, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University, where I founded and direct both the Western Indian Ocean Studies Program and the Jain Studies Program within the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs. My scholarship sits at the intersection of Islamic studies, Indian Ocean history, and interreligious relations, with my first monograph, The Khōjā of Tanzania (Brill, 2015), anchoring an ongoing research program on Khoja diasporic communities and Shia intellectual history. More recent work centers on covenantal pluralism and Jewish-Muslim relations in the post-October 7 American context, in which I co-founded Miami Interfaith. Outside the university, I serve as Executive Director of The East-West Foundation and previously directed the Templeton Religion Trust's Covenantal Pluralism Initiative, with earlier service at the U.S. State Department and U.S. Northern Command. I read and work across Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Gujarati, Swahili, and Sanskrit, which shapes my appetite for books that cross linguistic and regional boundaries—particularly in Islamic studies, South Asian and African religion, Jewish studies, ethnography, and the political theology of pluralism. I also host the Interfaiths podcast and Substack.
NBN Episodes hosted by Iqbal:
November 2, 2026
I Am The Other
What happens when a devout imam and a secular Jewish former federal prosecutor decide to talk about the things that divide them rather than the things…