Born in Tanzania, Abdulaziz Sachedina (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))  is professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and B.A. degrees from Aligarh Muslim University in India and Ferdowsi University in Iran. He has been visiting professor at Wilfrid Laurier, Waterloo, and McGill Universities in Canada, as well as Haverford College and the University of Jordan, Amman. He has lectured widely in East Africa, India, Pakistan, Europe, and the Middle East.

Dr. Sachedina is a core member of the Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism Project in the CSIS Preventive Diplomacy Program and a key contributor—along with Rabbi Marc Gopin and the Reverend David Steele—to the program’s efforts to link religion to universal human needs and values in the service of peacebuilding.

He contributed to Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty (University of South Carolina Press, 1988) and recently published his study The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford University Press. 2001).

Dr. Sachedina areas of expertise are political Islam, religious conflict resolution through
analysis of Islamic legal tradition; Islamic roots of religious and political pluralism and human rights in the Middle East, Pakistan, and East Africa

http://www.islam-democracy.org/sachedina_bio.asp