Heellife Link: https://heellife.unc.edu/event/11585527 PLEASE REGISTER This coming Tuesday, the Center will welcome Dr. Michael O’Sullivan, co-winner of Carolina’s Outstanding Contribution to Middle East Studies Book Award, to discuss No Birds of Passage: A History of Gujarati Muslim Business Communities, 1800–1975. Please join us at 5:30PM in the Fedex Global Education Center, Room 1005! Dr. O’Sullivan will also host a roundtable discussion on a selection from No Birds of Passage at 12PM on 9/9. To participate, please register at this link. About the text: During the nineteenth century, three Gujarati Muslim commercial castes — the Bohras, Khojas, and Memons — came to dominate Muslim business in South Asia. Although these communities constitute less than 1 percent of South Asia’s Muslim population, they are still disproportionately represented among the region’s leading Muslim-owned firms today. In No Birds of Passage, Michael O’Sullivan argues that the conditions enabling their success have never been understood, thanks to stereotypes—embraced equally by colonial administrators and Muslim commentators—that estrange them from their religious identity. Yet while long viewed as Hindus in all but name, or as “Westernized” Muslims who embraced colonial institutions, these groups in fact entwined economic prerogatives and religious belief in a distinctive form of Muslim capitalism.