Ali Al'amin Mazrui (24 February 1933 – 12 October 2014), was a Kenyan-born American academic, professor, and political writer on African and Islamic studies, and North-South relations.

[3] He was the son of Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui, the Chief Islamic Judge (Qadi) in Kadhi courts of Kenya Colony.

His father was also a scholar and author, and one of his books has been translated into English by Hamza Yusuf as The Content of Character (2004), to which Ali supplied a foreword.

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

[5] 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.

[7] He was influenced by Kwame Nkrumah's ideas of pan-Africanism and consciencism, which formed the backbone of his discussion on "Africa's triple heritage" (Africanity, Islam and Christianity).

He told his biographer that 1967, when he published three books, was the year that he had made his declaration to the academic world "that I planned to be prolific – for better or for worse!"

[9] His 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.

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.

He 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 Mazrui served as the Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies (CAAS) at the University of Michigan.

"[13] 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.

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.

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

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

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

He 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.

While rejecting violence and terrorism Mazrui has praised some of the anti-imperialist sentiment that plays an important role in modern Islamic fundamentalism.

In the United States, however, where it aired on some PBS channels, The Africans drew a great amount of scrutiny for being allegedly anti-western.

The loudest critic of the documentary series was Lynne Cheney, who was at the time the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

While he was surrounded by controversy at U of M (he has been accused of being anti-Semitic, anti-American, and generally radical) he wrote to his African colleagues saying that the debate had remained remarkably civil and academic.

[27] On the other hand, in Jos, things got so heated that the university faculty once put out a flyer threatening to punish anti-Mazrui libel "in the pugilist style".

Mazrui made the argument that Israel and the Zionist movement behaved in an imperialist fashion and that they used their biblical beliefs and the events of the holocaust for political gain.

To compare Israel to Nazi Germany is the ultimate racial slur … To digress from politics to anti-Semitic tones only fuels the fire of hatred.

[11] Speaking largely with a mind to cold war international politics, Mazrui argued that the world needed more than two sides holding nuclear arms.

By virtue of the continent's central location and relative non-alignment, he argued that Africa would be the perfect keeper of the peace between the East and the West.

[38] The funeral prayer was held at the Mbaruk Mosque in Old Town and he was laid to rest at the family's Mazrui Graveyard opposite Fort Jesus.