Abdullahi Ahmed An-Nai’m

Born in 1946, An-Na’im is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. His specialties include human rights in Islam and cross-cultural issues in human rights. He is the director of the Religion and Human Rights Program at Emory, a senior fellow of Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion and a former Executive Director of the African bureau of Human Rights Watch. Currently, he’s a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Migrant Rights. He argues for a synergy and interdependence between human rights, religion and secularism, instead of a dichotomy and incompatibility between them. In February 2009, An-Na`im received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universite catholique de Louvain (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve) and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U. Leuven, Leuven), Belgium. He also serves as Global Legal Scholar at the Law School, University of Warwick, UK (until August 2010); and Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria (until December 2010). An-Naim is originally from Sudan, where he was greatly influenced by the Islamic reform movement of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, but is also an American citizen.