Basit Kareem Iqbal is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Associate Member in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University. An anthropologist and longtime academic editor, his research explores the difficulty of the present within and across distinct traditions and forms of life.
Based on fieldwork with refugees, relief workers, and religious scholars in Jordan and Canada, Iqbal’s recent monograph The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (2025) offers an ethnography of Islamic theology in the shadow of war. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Critical Times and History of the Present as well as on multiple professional association steering committees.
He is currently working on his second monograph, tentatively titled And From What Evil He Created: Essays in Seeking Refuge, and on a translation of Yassin al-Haj Saleh’s 2021 book al-Fazi‘ wa tamthiluh, tentatively titled Representing the Atrocious: On the Destruction of Syria and the Ruination of Form.
