Episode Overview
Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in Islamic Studies
Episode: Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025)
Date: November 14, 2025
Guest: Basit Kareem Iqbal, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Member in Religious Studies, McMaster University
Host: [Name not specified, New Books in Islamic Studies interviewer]
Main Theme
This episode features Basit Kareem Iqbal discussing his new book, The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution. The conversation weaves through Iqbal’s ethnographic research with Syrian refugees and humanitarian organizations in Jordan and Canada, focusing on how Islamic theological questions are lived, negotiated, and tested by displaced Syrians. Central to their discussion are the themes of trial (fitna), tribulation, divine mercy, and the complexities of living in the aftermath of revolution, violence, and displacement, as well as the challenges of secular humanitarianism versus Islamic charity.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Intellectual Journey & Approach
[04:42–07:49]
- Iqbal’s personal journey began with a year studying Arabic and Islam in Damascus over 20 years ago, forging deep connections with Syrian friends and teachers.
- The eruption of the Syrian revolution altered his research trajectory:
“I realized that what I was actually interested in wasn’t so much trying to understand what happened to those individuals... I was most interested in trying to understand the war itself through that tradition.” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 05:54)
- He frames his work around the distinction between the “object of observation” (actual humanitarian and charitable activity) and the “object of study” (deeper theological modes of comprehension).
2. Contextualizing the Syrian Revolution
[07:50–12:32]
- Iqbal intentionally avoids providing a linear, external history. Rather, he offers the war’s account through his interlocutors’ lived experience, emphasizing the persistent impact of violence and the ongoing struggle to make sense of divine mercy amidst horror.
- The conversation details the uncertainty of locating a “beginning” to the tribulation:
“When does this begin? When does the trial of the war begin? Does it begin in 2011, or does it begin, you know, 50 years prior?... Can you locate any world outside that?” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 09:34)
3. Ethnography of Theology: Method & Structure
[12:33–20:16]
- The book’s core is its “ethnography of theology”—not simply the lived experience of theology, but a rigorous effort to apprehend events through the “asymmetrical relationship between God and creation.”
- Iqbal describes the structure: three substantive chapters—“Refuge,” “Tribulation,” and “The Heights”—linked by “thresholds,” which are thematic interludes that reflect the transitional or liminal nature of his subjects’ lives.
- On methodological restraint:
“It doesn’t mean... that everything that they do, I think we should understand that in a theological register exclusively... It’s behind what’s going on.” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 15:25)
- Each chapter adopts distinctive writing and analytic strategies: critique, juxtaposition, and lingering with a key interlocutor.
4. Chapter One: Problems of Religion in Humanitarianism
[21:02–27:32]
- The chapter “Refuge” addresses how Muslim charitable organizations complicate the landscape of humanitarian work.
- Islamic charities:
- Are vital aid providers but don’t fit neatly into secular (or Christian) logics of neutrality/universality, e.g., by aiding “widows and orphans” of those killed fighting the regime.
- Are seen as “too political, too religious.” (Iqbal, 24:38)
- These sites are dense spaces of both logistical aid and deep theological negotiation, revealing a persistent gap (“object of observation” vs. “object of study”).
5. Chapter Two: Tribulation—Theological Debate & Lived Suffering
[27:32–40:15]
- This “most substantive” chapter uses four archetypal interlocutors (named for early Islamic leaders: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali) to explore reactions to tribulation.
- The host presses Iqbal on his exchange with “Ali,” the Sufi mystic, who uses the story of Musa (Moses) and Khidr from the Qur’an to illuminate the relation between knowledge, suffering, and divine mystery.
- Key Quote:
“He said that God has both attributes—both [Jalal and Jamal, majesty and beauty] need to be affirmed, and both are related in everything in creation.” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 30:09)
- Iqbal struggles with the analogy between incomprehensible divine action and the very real violence of war, and “Ali” resists easy theodicy:
“We also don’t bear the world with steadfastness... It comes back to a fundamentally asymmetrical relationship between outer meaning and inner reality.” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 36:32)
- Key Quote:
- The interaction highlights the limits of analogy, the enduring opacity of tribulation, and the impossibility of tidy reconciliation.
6. Chapter Three: The Heights—Suspension, In-Betweenness, and Lucidity
[44:07–57:29]
- Focuses on Bilal, an imam living at the border of Jordan and Syria, caring for orphans and haunted by loss.
- “Heights” refers to the Qur’anic “A’raf,” a liminal space between paradise and hell—inhabited by those who can witness both but are themselves suspended.
- Key Quote:
“There’s a relationship between their position... between and their recognition, that they witness both possibilities, but that witnessing doesn't necessarily bear on what they can do about it.” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 45:07)
- Key Quote:
- Heights becomes a grammar for existential and political liminality: inside/outside, mobility/immobility, hope/desolation.
- Bilal refuses to leave the border, inhabiting a space dense with memory, loss, duty, and persistent supplication.
7. Thresholds & Autoethnography
[57:29–59:33]
- The “thresholds” link chapters, thematizing natality (new beginnings) and ambivalence (competing allegiances).
- Iqbal comments on inhabiting the “mutual implication” of these questions—not only for displaced Syrians but for himself.
- The host notes the subtlety of Iqbal’s presence in the text, which avoids overt self-centeredness while acknowledging positionality.
8. On Writing: Style, Influence, and Representing Suffering
[59:33–67:36]
- The host praises Iqbal's writing:
“James Baldwin often talks about clean writing and accessible writing...there's just power in that. And so I thought about him reading some of just what you did.” (Interviewer, 58:00)
- Iqbal, self-deprecating, elaborates on his concern with avoiding sensationalism or a manipulative “spectacle of suffering” both ethically and aesthetically.
- Notes being influenced by Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Teju Cole’s Human Archipelago, and others who caution against the limits and uses of images.
- Prefers subtlety, intention, and care over attempts to “excite the sentiment of another through a spectacle of suffering.”
9. Future Projects
[68:43–74:09]
- Iqbal is working on a book about “evil,” inspired by the Qur’an’s final surahs and based on leftover fieldwork threads, including interviews with prison survivors.
- It will be “partially ethnographic, but also partially textual as well.”
- A translation project: a Syrian intellectual’s meditation on the destruction of Syria, reflecting on the limits of representation about catastrophe.
- An essay on Israeli military flyers over Gaza that use Qur’anic verses, probing how language and scripture can be weaponized:
- “It condenses something about the total ambitions...to be able to claim or ventriloquize the voice of God in that way...” (Basit Kareem Iqbal, 72:14)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On the limits of academic and theological understanding:
“Can you approach something obliquely? Right. Without coming at it head on? What’s the process of translation that’s necessary? ...How do you inhabit the terms of different Islamic traditions to understand or apprehend or perceive that world?”
— Basit Kareem Iqbal [05:58] -
On the refusal of easy comfort or resolution:
“The point of all of this that we’re kind of weeding through is not like an easy solution...there isn’t an easy exit out of what is really difficult, difficult realities.”
— Interviewer [20:16] -
On the failure of analogy in suffering and theodicy:
“Actually all those lines of my map were off the mark...their relationship also can be asymmetrical. It can be interrupted...you encounter a kind of intolerable limit where the analogies break down.”
— Basit Kareem Iqbal [37:09] -
On the 'Heights' and witnessing:
“They can see the saved and the damned...but that witnessing doesn’t necessarily bear on what they can do about it.”
— Basit Kareem Iqbal [45:07] -
On writing about suffering:
“What are other ways of engaging—not turning away certainly—but what are other ways of engaging in those same spaces of difficulty in a way that doesn’t simply recourse back to the spectacle of suffering?”
— Basit Kareem Iqbal [63:09]
Timestamps of Key Segments
| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------| | 04:42–07:49 | Iqbal’s intellectual journey and object of study | | 07:50–12:32 | Syrian revolution context—how to narrate trauma | | 12:33–20:16 | Ethnography of theology and book structure | | 21:02–27:32 | Islamic charities vs. secular humanitarianism | | 27:32–40:15 | "Tribulation" chapter: Sufi theological debates | | 44:07–57:29 | "The Heights": Bilal and grammatical suspension | | 57:29–59:33 | Thresholds, autoethnography, mutual implication | | 59:33–67:36 | On writing, influences, and ethics of representation | | 68:43–74:09 | Next book projects: Evil, translation, weaponized texts|
Summary Table: Book Structure and Key Themes
| Chapter | Focus | Method/Approach | |----------------|--------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------| | Refuge | Muslim charities, intersection with secular humanitarianism | Ethnographic critique | | Tribulation | Four interlocutors’ theological responses to suffering | Juxtaposition, dialogue | | The Heights | Bilal’s story; liminality, witnessing, suspended existence | Deep engagement, narrative focus | | Thresholds | Natality, ambivalence; interlocutors' challenge to author | Brief, liminal essays |
Final Reflections
Iqbal’s The Dread Heights is an ethically attuned and theologically acute ethnography that refuses to simply turn suffering into spectacle or Western sociological problematics. The conversation in this episode tackles the failures of analogy, the limits and power of witnessing, and the power of words and images when approaching immense suffering. Both interviewer and author emphasize the care and subtlety required when writing about harrowing realities—foregrounding the voices of displaced Syrians and their enduring struggle to find meaning in a world “torn apart” by violence, displacement, and the unfathomable mysteries of divine mercy.
Recommended for listeners interested in:
- Contemporary Syria and the aftermath of revolution
- Anthropology/theology/Islamic studies
- Humanitarianism and critical aid studies
- The ethics and aesthetics of writing about violence and suffering