Walking with Arba’een Pilgrims feat. Alex Shams

UChicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies

With nearly 25 million attendees, the Arba’een Pilgrimage in Iraq is one of the largest public gatherings in the world. Banned under Saddam Hussein, Shi’a Muslims from around the world have renewed this annual ritual in recent years, defying sectarian violence and the threat of ISIS. Alex Shams, a Ph.D student in Anthropology at the University of Chicago, recently traveled to Iraq to study this extraordinary human phenomenon. Along the road to Kerbala, he witnessed the new forms of solidarity that Arba’een is forging between Shi’is from Iraq to India. Interview by Krishna S. Kulkarni. The views expressed in this podcast are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.