Basit Kareem Iqbal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University.

"The Dread Heights is a remarkable contribution to the anthropology of religion. Iqbal traces the different ways refugees fleeing from the political cruelty and oppression of the Syrian regime resort to the Islamic tradition to make sense of their desperate, disrupted lives. The book offers insights that are at once moving and original, and it helps to push the debate about the relationship of transcendence to immanence, of theology to politics, to new levels. It deserves to be widely read." - Talal Asad, City University of New York "Artfully and poignantly, Basit Iqbal guides us through a landscape of displacement, devastation, and destruction. His gripping book asks us to reflect on an apocalyptic present without ever resorting to the temptation of hope or the promise of healing. It offers a pathbreaking example of what an ethnography of theology (and specifically of eschatology) can look like - one that takes seriously the hold of the Islamic tradition while also showing how multiple interpretations can coexist and honoring the ultimate unknowability and incommensurability of the Divine." - Amira Mittermaier, University of Toronto

• Introduction: God Grants Relief 11 Refuge 29The Ruin of Community, 30 • Translating Muslim Humanitarianism, 38 • Abstemious Images, 47 • Pedagogy in Exile, 53 • No Refuge from God but God, 63Threshold: Natality 692 Tribulation 78Accepting, 82 • Reckoning, 100 • Distributing, 114 •Disclosing, 125 • A Grammar of Tribulation, 144Threshold: Ambivalence 1503 The Heights 158Woe to Our Condition Here, 159 • Brutal Tyranny, 163 • AsThough It Were Yesterday, 171 • If the Horizon Breaks, 184 •The Dread Heights, 192Afterword: Eternity Has Fallen 200Acknowledgments 205Notes 209Bibliography 259Index 281

Basit Kareem Iqbal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University.

"The Dread Heights is a remarkable contribution to the anthropology of religion. Iqbal traces the different ways refugees fleeing from the political cruelty and oppression of the Syrian regime resort to the Islamic tradition to make sense of their desperate, disrupted lives. The book offers insights that are at once moving and original, and it helps to push the debate about the relationship of transcendence to immanence, of theology to politics, to new levels. It deserves to be widely read." - Talal Asad, City University of New York "Artfully and poignantly, Basit Iqbal guides us through a landscape of displacement, devastation, and destruction. His gripping book asks us to reflect on an apocalyptic present without ever resorting to the temptation of hope or the promise of healing. It offers a pathbreaking example of what an ethnography of theology (and specifically of eschatology) can look like - one that takes seriously the hold of the Islamic tradition while also showing how multiple interpretations can coexist and honoring the ultimate unknowability and incommensurability of the Divine." - Amira Mittermaier, University of Toronto

• Introduction: God Grants Relief 11 Refuge 29The Ruin of Community, 30 • Translating Muslim Humanitarianism, 38 • Abstemious Images, 47 • Pedagogy in Exile, 53 • No Refuge from God but God, 63Threshold: Natality 692 Tribulation 78Accepting, 82 • Reckoning, 100 • Distributing, 114 •Disclosing, 125 • A Grammar of Tribulation, 144Threshold: Ambivalence 1503 The Heights 158Woe to Our Condition Here, 159 • Brutal Tyranny, 163 • AsThough It Were Yesterday, 171 • If the Horizon Breaks, 184 •The Dread Heights, 192Afterword: Eternity Has Fallen 200Acknowledgments 205Notes 209Bibliography 259Index 281

Basit Kareem Iqbal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University.

"The Dread Heights is a remarkable contribution to the anthropology of religion. Iqbal traces the different ways refugees fleeing from the political cruelty and oppression of the Syrian regime resort to the Islamic tradition to make sense of their desperate, disrupted lives. The book offers insights that are at once moving and original, and it helps to push the debate about the relationship of transcendence to immanence, of theology to politics, to new levels. It deserves to be widely read." - Talal Asad, City University of New York "Artfully and poignantly, Basit Iqbal guides us through a landscape of displacement, devastation, and destruction. His gripping book asks us to reflect on an apocalyptic present without ever resorting to the temptation of hope or the promise of healing. It offers a pathbreaking example of what an ethnography of theology (and specifically of eschatology) can look like - one that takes seriously the hold of the Islamic tradition while also showing how multiple interpretations can coexist and honoring the ultimate unknowability and incommensurability of the Divine." - Amira Mittermaier, University of Toronto

• Introduction: God Grants Relief 11 Refuge 29The Ruin of Community, 30 • Translating Muslim Humanitarianism, 38 • Abstemious Images, 47 • Pedagogy in Exile, 53 • No Refuge from God but God, 63Threshold: Natality 692 Tribulation 78Accepting, 82 • Reckoning, 100 • Distributing, 114 •Disclosing, 125 • A Grammar of Tribulation, 144Threshold: Ambivalence 1503 The Heights 158Woe to Our Condition Here, 159 • Brutal Tyranny, 163 • AsThough It Were Yesterday, 171 • If the Horizon Breaks, 184 •The Dread Heights, 192Afterword: Eternity Has Fallen 200Acknowledgments 205Notes 209Bibliography 259Index 281