Education

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

Specializing in human rights & international relations, with a regional focus on the Middle East/Muslim world, Amyn Sajoo's research is at the interface of citizenship and identity. His early career was with the Canadian departments of Justice and Global Affairs in Ottawa. Dr. Sajoo then served as the 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, McGill, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), London. He then served as Visiting Middle East Scholar (2010) for Canada’s External Affairs department (now Global Affairs).

Dr. Sajoo has contributed extensively to the newsmedia, including the Guardian, Open Democracy, Globe & Mail, CBC Radio, Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor. As the host of the 2022 public conversations series on “Identity & Citizenship,” Dr. Sajoo will engage with leading cultural, legal & political figures on issues of pluralism and migration against the backdrop of Islamophobia.

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

Latest Publications

• "Fear is the Key" (Review Essay: The Age of Insecurity; The Emotional Life of Populism; Gendered Islamophobia), Rungh, Vol 11:1 (Mar 2024).
• Review of No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis, by Serena Parekh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020),  Canadian Journal of Law & Society, Vol. 38:2 (2023).
• Review of Reclaiming Populism: How Economic Fairness Can Win Back Disenchanted Voters, Cambridge: Polity Press, January 2023
  
• "Western countries demand Russia follows international law – so why don’t they?", The Conversation, May 30, 2022.
• "Amyn B. Sajoo: Ukraine: empathy and exodus", The Vancouver Sun, March 17, 2022.
  
• "Secularist Dogmatics: Islamophobia and the Courts," Academia Letters, Sept 2021.
• "Particular universals: human rights depend on identity politics," Open Global Rights, August 13, 2021.
  
• “After Identity Politics? Faith in Liberal Citizenship,” Canadian Political Science Review, Vol 14:1 (2020), 77-97. 
• Review of Citizenship, by Dimitry Kochenov (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2019), Canadian Journal of Law & Society, Vol. 35:3 (Dec 2020), 552-4.

Media Appearances

• The New York Times, One in Five Canadians Is Now an Immigrant, and the Nation Approves, Amyn Sajoo is quoted
  
• Expert Witness for the Canada Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights on the topic of Islamophobia in Canada
• Interview with BBC World News, "Life In Afghanistan Will Be Regulated By Laws Of Holy Sharia": Taliban (password: C&M:temporary-2021)
• Interview with CBC Radio, 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

All course offerings

• IS 350W: Seminar on Global Problems in Interdisciplinary Perspective (Capstone)
• IS 451: Core Texts in International Studies (Capstone)
• IS 309 ST: International Law
• IS 309 ST: International Human Rights
• IS 315: Middle East Politics
• IS 358: Development & Difference in Historical Perspective
• IS 230: Beyond the Nation State: Identity & Belonging in a Globalized World
• IS 105: Around the World through Film

Upcoming terms