Baqer Salman Al-Najjer (Arabic: باقر سلمان النجار, born 1953) is a Bahraini sociology professor, politician, author, and columnist.
Al-Najjar worked as a research coordinator in Kuwait for the Joint Program Production Corporation of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
He has been a professor of sociology at the University of Bahrain since 1984,[2] once headed the Department of Social Sciences, and served as Dean of the College of Arts there from 1995 to 1999.
Considered among the most prominent and prolific Gulf researchers in sociology, he is also a columnist for the newspapers Asharq Al-Awsat[3] and Al Bilad.
Al-Najjar sparked controversy when he wrote the following in the book الحداثة الممتنعة في الخليج العربي ("Reluctant Modernity in the Persian Gulf") that: The Shiites are a sectarian minority in the Gulf...In Bahrain, estimates vary around 50%, but because of the naturalization process that Bahraini society has undergone during the past two decades, it does not exceed 50%, and some unofficial estimates indicate that their percentage has decreased to less than 47% of the total population.