It was confirmed that a professor of Sociology of Religion who visited a few years ago my school, UCSB, was amongst the victims of the tsunami. Iskandar was a professor of the sociology of religion and political Islam from the State Institute for Islamic Studies Ar-Raniry (IAIN) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
Iskandar, who used only one name, came to the university though the UCSB Fulbright Summer Institute of Religion, a six-week academic program for university faculty from abroad to come to the United States to study a particular theme or topic in American society. The program’s director, Holly Grether, said in an e-mail that Iskandar died in the recent tsunami along with his wife and two of their three children. Iskandar was a professor of the sociology of religion and political Islam from the State Institute for Islamic Studies Ar-Raniry (IAIN) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.