TEHRAN – Four American scholars have missed the 36th Iran’s Book of the Year Awards due to the partial federal government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s demand for border wall funding, an organizer announced on Tuesday.

Maurice Pomerantz, George Archer, Hussein Ali Abdulsater and Yousef Casewit have failed to prepare the necessary documents for travel to Iran over the partial federal government shutdown, Khaneye Ketab Institute Managing Director Niknam Hosseinipur told the Persian service of IRNA.

According to protocol, Iran cannot announce them as winners or send them the awards, he lamented.  

Pomerantz, an associate professor of literature at New York University Abu Dhabi, was scheduled to receive an award for his first book “Licit Magic: The Life and Letters of al-Sahib b. Abbad” about letters of the tenth-century vizier and littérateur al-Sahib b. Abbad and their political, social and cultural dimensions.

Iowa State University Professor Archer was to be honored for his book “A Place Between Two Places: The Quranic Barzakh”.

Hussein Ali Abdulsater, an assistant professor of Arabic culture and Islamic studies at the Department of Classics of the University of Notre Dame, was slated to receive an award for “Shi’i Doctrine, Mu’tazili Theology”.

Casewit is an assistant professor of Quranic studies at the University of Chicago. He was to receive to the honor for the book “The Mystics of al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajan and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century”, a study on Ibn Barrajan’s life and teachings.

Photo: Maurice Pomerantz, an associate professor of literature at New York University Abu Dhabi, missed the 36th Iran’s Book of the Year Awards due to the partial federal government shutdown in the U.S.

MMS/YAW