Amyn Sajoo

Doctorate: McGill University, Montreal
LL.B (Hons): University of London, King’s College

I specialize in human rights & international relations -- with current research at the interface of law, citizenship & public religion. My early career was with the Canadian departments of Justice and Global Affairs in Ottawa. I served as a Canada-ASEAN Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, with fieldwork in Malaysia & Indonesia—followed by academic affiliations on both sides of the Atlantic, including at Cambridge and McGill universities, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), London.

I have contributed extensively to the newsmedia, including the Guardian, Open Democracy, Globe & Mail, the BBC and CBC Radio, and The Asian Wall Street Journal. As the host since 2018 of a public conversations series on “Identity & Citizenship,” I engage with leading cultural, legal & political figures on issues of pluralism and belonging -- most recently, with regard to Islamophobia.

My books include Pluralism in Old Societies and New States (1994), Muslim Ethics (2004), and Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination (edited volume, 2008). I am the general/contributing editor of the Muslim Heritage Series (I.B. Tauris-IIS, London), in which the 5th publication, The Shari’a: History, Ethics and Law, was selected as a 2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association.