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Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

Visiting Professor and Senior Fellow

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is a Visiting Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for the fall 2009 semester. He is on leave from his position as Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University, where he focuses on cross-cultural human rights issues, with an emphasis on Islam. A native of Sudan and human rights activist, An-Na'im places the Qur'an and the development of the Islamic tradition in its historical context and examines their implications for our contemporary thinking about justice and the state. He is the author of Toward an Islamic Reformation(1990), African Constitutionalism and the Role of Islam (2006) and Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari‘a (2008). At Emory, he directs projects on Women and Land in Africa and Islamic Family Law, and a Fellowship Program in Islam and Human Rights. An-Na'im holds LL.B. degrees from the University of Khartoum and the University of Cambridge, and earned his Ph.D. in Law from the University of Edinburgh. While at Georgetown, An-Na'im will work with students from across the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Georgetown University Law Center. He is teaching The Future of Islamic Law, a course that focuses on the relationship between Shari`a and modern legal systems, and examines some of the social and cultural implications of adherence to Shari`a among Muslims today. As a senior fellow at the Berkley Center he will be participating in a number of high-profile events, including a conversation with Talal Asad about Islam, human rights, and the secular (September 29), a conference on Human Rights and the "Defamation of Religions" (October 21) at the Law Center, and a conversation on "Islam and Liberal Democracy: How Tradition Matters" (November 17).