60 Facts About Ali Mazrui

Ali Mazrui's positions included Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Ali Mazrui produced the television documentary series The Africans: A Triple Heritage.

Ali Mazrui was the son of Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui, the Chief Islamic Judge in Kadhi courts of Kenya Colony.

Ali Mazrui's father was a scholar and author, and one of his books has been translated into English by Hamza Yusuf as The Content of Character, to which Ali supplied a foreword.

The Ali Mazrui family was a historically wealthy and important family in Kenya, having previously been the rulers of Mombasa.

Ali Mazrui's father was the Chief Kadhi of Kenya, the highest authority on Islamic law.

Ali Mazrui credited his father for instilling in him the urge for intellectual debate, as his father not only participated in court proceedings but was a renowned pamphleteer and public debater.

Ali Mazrui initially intended to follow the path of his father as an Islamist and pursue his study in Al-Azhar University in Egypt.

Ali Mazrui then worked in the Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education.

Ali Mazrui attended primary school in Mombasa, where he recalled having learned English specifically to participate in formal debates, before he turned the talent to writing.

Ali Mazrui began his academic career at Makerere University in Uganda, where he had dreamed of attending since he was a child.

At Makerere, Ali Mazrui served as a professor of political science, and began drawing his international acclaim.

Ali Mazrui felt that his years at Makerere were some of the most important and productive of his life.

Ali Mazrui reflected that he felt forced to leave the University of Makerere.

Ali Mazrui's departure was likely the result of his desire to remain a neutral academic in the face of pressures to attach his growing prestige as a political thinker to one of the regional factions.

Okello originally tried to convince Ali Mazrui to become an advisor to him and then simply tried to enlist Ali Mazrui's assistance in writing a constitution for Zanzibar.

Ali Mazrui told Okello that, while he was inclined to sympathize with the cause, it would be a violation of the moral duty of a professor and an academic to join with a political agenda.

Ali Mazrui was later approached by Idi Amin who was the president of Uganda at the end of Ali Mazrui's time at Makerere.

Amin, according to Ali Mazrui, wanted Ali Mazrui to become his special adviser.

Ali Mazrui declined this invitation, for fear that it would be unsafe, and by doing so lost his political standing in Uganda.

Ali Mazrui often said that he would like to return to Uganda, but cited his strained relationship with the Ugandan government, as well as the unfriendliness of the Ugandan people towards a Kenyan political scientist as the factors keeping him away.

In 1974, Ali Mazrui was hired as a professor of political science at the University of Michigan.

Ali Mazrui held that spending time teaching and being part of the discourse in Africa was important to not losing his understanding of the African perspective.

From 1978 until 1981 Ali Mazrui served as the Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Ali Mazrui believed the way to better Africa was to educate African Americans in global politics and to strengthen their connection with Africa, all things that could be under the purview of CAAS.

Ali Mazrui taught at the University of Michigan until 1989, when he took a two-year leave of absence to accept the Albert Schweitzer professorship at SUNY Binghamton.

Ali Mazrui announced his resignation from the University of Michigan on 29 May 1991.

The University of Michigan reportedly matched this offer, but Ali Mazrui decided it was too little too late.

Ali Mazrui stated that he was unconvinced by U of M's commitment to the study of political science in the third world.

Ali Mazrui's departure caused a conversation about racial diversity at the University of Michigan; a conversation he had not been a huge part of for the fifteen years while he was on the U of M campus.

Ali Mazrui had been hired in 1974, while the university was under heavy criticism, especially from the second Black Action Movement, for not keeping its promises for diversity in the student body and among the faculty.

In 1999, Ali Mazrui retired as the inaugural Walter Rodney Professor at the University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana.

In 2005, Ali Mazrui was selected as the 73rd topmost intellectual person in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine and Foreign Policy.

Ali Mazrui believed there were six paradoxes that are central to understanding Africa:.

Ali Mazrui argued that, as long as Africa remained dependent on the developed world, no relationship between the developed world and Africa would be beneficial to Africa.

Ali Mazrui believed the greatest resource that Africa possessed was the African people.

Ali Mazrui explained to a friend that his joint professorship at Michigan and Jos was his attempt to be a part of such a connection.

Ali Mazrui has served on the board of the American Muslim Council, Washington, DC.

Ali Mazrui is author or co-author of more than twenty books.

Ali Mazrui has published hundreds of articles in major scholastic journals and for public media.

Ali Mazrui has served on the editorial boards of more than twenty international scholarly journals.

Ali Mazrui was widely consulted by heads of states and governments, international media and research institutions for political strategies and alternative thoughts.

Ali Mazrui first rose to prominence as a critic of some of the accepted orthodoxies of African intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ali Mazrui was critical of African socialism and all strains of Marxism.

Ali Mazrui argued that communism was a Western import just as unsuited for the African condition as the earlier colonial attempts to install European type governments.

Ali Mazrui argued that a revised liberalism could help the continent and described himself as a proponent of a unique ideology of African liberalism.

Ali Mazrui believed the current capitalist system was deeply exploitative of Africa, and that the West rarely if ever lived up to their liberal ideals and could be described as global apartheid.

Ali Mazrui has opposed Western interventions in the developing world, such as the Iraq War.

Ali Mazrui has long been opposed to many of the policies of Israel, being one of the first to try to link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa's apartheid.

Especially in recent years, Ali Mazrui became a well known commentator on Islam and Islamism.

Ali Mazrui has argued, controversially, that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy.

The endowment had put $600,000 toward the funding of The Africans and Cheney felt that Ali Mazrui had not held to the conditions on which the endowment had granted the funding.

Ali Mazrui had the words "A Commentary" added to the American version of the series, alongside Mazrui's credits.

Probably the most fire Ali Mazrui came under during his tenure at the University of Michigan was in response to his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ali Mazrui was an outspoken supporter of Palestine and, more than that, an outspoken critic of the state of Israel.

Ali Mazrui went so far as to call the Israeli government "fascist" in its behavior.

Ali Mazrui admitted to having problems with the Israeli government and the Zionist movement, but said that he held these views independent of any views about the Jewish people as an ethnicity.

Ali Mazrui was a regular contributor to newspapers in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, most notably the Daily Nation, The Standard, the Daily Monitor, and the City Press.

Ali Mazrui was ranked among the world's top 100 public intellectuals by readers of Prospect Magazine Foreign Policy Magazine.

Ali Mazrui died of natural causes at his home in Vestal in New York on Sunday, 12 October 2014.