Please join Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives on Friday, March 8th in Botterell Hall Rm B139 at 11:00am for a talk.

Dr. Wilson Chacko Jacob, Concordia University will be presenting “For God or Empire: Sayyid Fadl and the Indian Ocean”  See attached poster.

BIO:  Dr. Jacob completed his Ph.D. in 2005 in the Departments of History and Middle East and Islamic Studies at New York University. He is currently engaged in a new multi-sited research project with two major components both focused on the problem of sovereignty. The first traces the life and career of an itinerant Muslim preacher and descendant of the Prophet across the Indian Ocean through India, Arabia, and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. This singular lens affords an incredible view onto the transformations in the nature of sovereignty engendered by the expanding governmental powers of empire-states, the British and Ottoman in this case, and the implications thereof for multiple dimensions of life. The second component examines the transformation and criminalization of the traditional urban strongman, al-futuwwa, during the expansion of a semi-colonial, semi-national state in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century. The research also considers the postcolonial afterlives of these figures.