Abdulaziz Sachedina, prominent Islamic scholar, dies at 83
Sachedina (born 1942) passed away on Wednesday in Virginia.
Sachedina was regarded as one of the most influential contemporary scholars of Islam. Born to a Shia family of Indian heritage in Tanzania, East Africa, he received his early education there.
His multicultural upbringing exposed him from an early age to questions of identity, tolerance and interfaith dialogue—concerns that would shape his entire academic life.
As a teenager, he moved to India to study the humanities at Aligarh Muslim University. He then traveled to Iran to deepen his understanding of Shiism, studying both seminary and university courses at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. It was during this period that his deliberate effort to bridge “textual study” with “scholarly method” began to take shape.
A decisive step in his intellectual trajectory came with his move to Canada, where he pursued his master’s and doctoral studies at the University of Toronto.
Read More:
His PhD dissertation on the “development of Mahdism in Imami Shiism” later formed the basis of his influential book Islamic Messianism.
Sachedina began his academic career in the 1970s and taught for more than three decades at the University of Virginia as a professor of religious studies.
He later joined George Mason University as the holder of the IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies. His teaching covered a wide range of fields, including Islamic theology (Shia and Sunni), the history of Islamic thought, Islamic bioethics, Islam and human rights, religious pluralism, and comparative Quranic studies.
Beyond teaching, he played an active role in intellectual institution-building, interfaith dialogue, and medical ethics committees.
Read More:
Among his many publications, some of the most notable are Islamic Messianism: The Idea of Mahdi in Twelver Shi‘ism, The Just Ruler in Shi‘ite Islam, Islamic Biomedical Ethics, Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism, and Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights.
He also authored numerous articles on ethics, contemporary jurisprudence, comparative theology and interfaith studies.
4320840
