Leacock 232
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
8:30 am - 9:00 am - Registration and Breakfast
9:00 am - 9:15 am - Director's and Co-Chairs' Welcome
9:15 am - 10:45 am - Panel 1: Philosophical Epistemologies of the Unseen and Ineffable
Chair: Dr. Fateme Savadi
Hikmat Jamal, Indication of the Hidden from what is Present in the Thought of al-Māturīdī
Eithar Abdulkareem, Al-Kindī's Rational Apophasis: A Hidden Medieval Islamic Response to the Problem of Ineffability
Shahdah Mahhouk, The Ethics of Believing the Unutterable: Ought we accept mystics' testimonies about the unutterable? (Virtual)
Mohammadmahdi Morvarid, Conflicts of Religious Experience and the Limits of Language
10:45 am - 11:15 am - Health Break
11:15 am - 12:45 pm - Panel 2: Theories and Practices of Translation and Representation
Chair: Salma Aly Shaaban
Livy Lyle, Walter Benjamin on Translation, Naming, and Linguistic Inadequacy
Maryam Heydarkhani, Naming the Unnameable: Persian Encounters with World Expositions and the Limits of Representation in the 19th Century
Mehvish Siddiqui, 'Ajab in Translation: Negotiating Metaphor, Genre, and Ideology in Niẓāmī's Poetics
Engy Sarhan, Syntax to Solidarity: Throwing [Stones], Translating Pleas (Virtual)
12:45 pm - 2:15 pm - Lunch
2:15 pm - 4:00 pm - Panel 3: Ritual, Resistance, and Confessional Identities
Chair: Dr. Behzad Borhan
Ridwan Olamilekan Mustapha, When the Unseen Speaks: Jinn Possession, Exorcism, and the Boundaries of Expression in Islam (Virtual)
Joy Saade, Nehmet Allah (God's blessing) and the holy soil of Annaya – Predispositions of Maronite cultural hegemony
Zeinab Diab, When Islamophobia Means Shiaphobia: The Lebanese Case (Virtual)
Shambhavi Siddhi, Epistemologies of Silence: Islamic Resistance Among Kashmiri Women
Rosey Amoah, Methods of the mystic: what the Fancy Dress Festival can tell us about a history of resistance (Virtual)
4:00 pm - 4:30 pm - Health Break
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm - Panel 4: The Future Scholars
Chair: Prof. Pasha Khan
Julnar Aizouki, Terror Capitalism and the Palestinian Laboratory in the Military Industrial Complex
Naadia Faruqui, A History of Camp Deen: The Longest Running Muslim Summer Camp in Canada
Shouzab Awan, The Evolution of Shīʿī Identity in Western Society
Thursday, April 23, 2026
8:45 am - 9:25 am - Breakfast
9:25 am - 9:30 am - Co-Chairs Remarks
9:30 am - 11:00 am - Panel 1: Articulating Trauma, Violence, and the Unthinkable
Chair: Sophia Hackel
Sanaa Shaikh, Slurs and Symbolic Violence: Examining Othering Through Language in Islamophobia and Hindu Nationalism
Veronika Nayir, Thinking the Impossible Event of Genocide (Virtual)
Maryam Anahita Yousefi, Performing Under the Gaze: Staging Censorship in Gholam-Hossein Saʿedi's Othello in Wonderland and Jafar Panahi's Cinema
Vatsal Sharma, Framing the Unknown: The Structures of Death in the Poetry of Mir Taqi Mir (Virtual)
11:00 am - 11:30 am - Health Break
11:30 am - 1:00 pm - Panel 2: Hermeneutics, Law, and the Sacred Economy
Chair: Kausar Bukhari
Malik Faisal Aslam, Articulating the Unutterable: Hermeneutics, Harm, and Ethical Silence in the Interpretation of Qur'an 4:34
Saeedeh Kardan, Image of the unseen: Taʾwīl in Nāṣir-i Khusraw's cosmology (Virtual)
Faezeh Izadi, From Sadaqah to Silence: The Semantic Instability of Zakāt and the Limits of Sacred Finance
Tareq Sharawi, Codifying Chivalry: A legal account on futuwwa
1:00 pm - 2:15 pm - Lunch
2:15 pm - 3:45 pm - Panel 3: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Naming
Chair: Jaleh Ebrahimi
Kausar Bukhari, Men Uttering Their Mother's Names: Public Memory, Female Lineage, and the Politics of Legitimacy in Mamluk Historiography
Tobin Johnson, "God gave them a desire for women": Construction and Expression of Lesbians as a Category of Women in Persian Sources
Amani Braa, Listening to the Unspeakable: Maternal Narratives and the Politics of Silence in the War on Radicalization (Virtual)
Sylas Fontenot, Translation and Sexual Categorization in Choukri's Al-Khobz al-Hafiyy
3:45 pm - 4:15 pm - Health Break
4:15 pm - 5:30 pm - Keynote Speaker, Prof. Mohammed Rustom
Sweet Surrender: A Sufi Philosopher and the Mystery of Love
Q&A Facilitator: Sara Mrouwe
5:30 pm - 5:35 pm - Co-Chairs Closing Remarks
6:00 pm - Dinner