Sunday, January 28, 12:30 p.m.; St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, 14311 Wells Port Drive, west of I-35 off Wells Branch Parkway.
Syed Akbar Hyder, “Religious Pluralism in Islamic Societies, Past and Present”
At a time when words like martyrdom and jihad are being used and misused for political purposes, Hyder’s analysis of the rich traditions of pluralism in Islam is crucial for Americans to understand. Rather than offering a unified reading of the Islamic tradition, Hyder reveals multiple, sometimes conflicting, understandings of the meaning of Islamic religious symbols.
Syed Akbar Hyder earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University and has been a professor of Asian Studies and Islamic Studies at the University of Texas since 2000. In his 2006 Oxford University Press book, Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory, Hyder examines the ways the Karbala symbol has provided inspiration in South Asia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population. Karbala is the city in modern-day Iraq where, in 680 C.E., a small band of the Prophet Muhammad’s family and their followers led by his grandson, Husain, rose up in a rebellion against the ruling caliph and were massacred.