Biography
Iqbal Akhtar is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University, where he holds a joint appointment across both departments. He is also the founding director of FIU’s Western Indian Ocean Studies program — the first research center of its kind in the United States and he helped build the foundations of an interdisciplinary Muslim Studies and Khōjā Studies initiative at the university. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh’s New College, School of Divinity (2012), an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Denver, an M.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Tulane University, and an A.B. in Political Science and Jewish, Islamic, & Near Eastern Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.
Akhtar’s research crosses religious studies, history, linguistics, and international relations, with particular expertise in Khōjā studies, the western Indian Ocean world, transnational and postcolonial histories, and Sindhi and Gujarati Islamic literature. His first monograph, The Khōjā of Tanzania: Discontinuities of a Postcolonial Religious Identity (Brill, 2016), draws on Gujarati, Kacchī, Swahili, and Arabic sources to trace how an Indic Muslim merchant caste on the Swahili coast reimagined itself — moving from an Indic caste identity (jñāti) toward an Afro-Asian Islamic community (jamatī) and an emergent Near Eastern–imaged Islamic nation (ummatī) — through the lenses of historiography, politics, linguistics, and ethnology. His current research reconstructs the eighteenth-century religious cosmology of the Sindhi Khōjā. At FIU he teaches courses including The International Relations of South Asia, Islam and International Relations, Islamic Political Thought, Gender and Jihad in the Quran, and Sufism: Islamic Mysticism.
His second book, Covenantal Pluralism (Springer, 2025), grows out of his work on the mutual obligations that distinct faith communities hold toward one another. A two-time U.S. Fulbright Scholar (Pakistan and Tanzania), he is the founder of The East-West Foundation, which fosters Muslim–Jewish dialogue and intellectual leadership for interfaith cooperation to enhance religious freedom for all.
Degrees
• Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, 2012
• M.A., Religious Studies, University of Denver, 2008
• M.A., Political Science, Tulane University, 2004
• A.B., Political Science and Jewish, Islamic, & Near Eastern Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, 2002
Areas of Expertise
Khōjā studies; western Indian Ocean studies; transnational and postcolonial histories; Jewish Studies, Islamic studies; religious pluralism; interfaith relations; ethics; and Islamic law
Books
Akhtar, Iqbal S. Covenantal Pluralism. Dordrecht: Springer, 2025
Akhtar, Iqbal S. The Khōjā of Tanzania: Discontinuities of a Postcolonial Religious Identity. Studies of Religion in Africa 43. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Selected Articles and Chapters
Akhtar, Iqbal S. Latino Muslims as Interfaith Bridge-builders: Theorizing Identity Negotiation and Jewish-Muslim Relations in Miami’s Polarized Landscape. Int J Lat Am Relig (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-026-00339-7
Akhtar, Iqbal S., and Zahir Bhalloo. “Les manuscrits du sud de la vallée de l’Indus en écriture khojkī sindhi: état des lieux et perspectives.” Asiatische Studien. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.
Akhtar, Iqbal S. “Exploring Ethno-Religious Identities of Khōjā: Preliminary Notes on a Missing Homeland.” In Global Diasporas in the Age of High Imperialism, edited by Ulrike Kirchberger et al., 177–86. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
Akhtar, Iqbal S. “South Asian Muslims in East Africa.” In Routledge Handbook of Africa-Asia Relations, edited by Pedro Raposo et al., 60–75. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
Akhtar, Iqbal S. “Religious Citizenship: The Case of the Globalized Khōjā.” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 10, no. 2 (2014): 219–36.
Akhtar, Iqbal S. “Negotiating the Racial Boundaries of Khōjā Caste Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial Zanzibar (1878–1899).” Journal of Africana Religions 2, no. 3 (2014).