Dr. Lutforahman Saeed is a research fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, where he conducts research on Taliban laws through the lens of the higher objectives of Islamic law (Maqasid al-Shari’ah). He previously served as a faculty member at the Faculty of Islamic Studies (Sharia) at Kabul University (KU), where he taught for over 27 years. Dr. Saeed earned his B.A. in Islamic Studies from Kabul University in 1991, followed by an LL.M. from the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle in 2010. He earned his Ph.D. summa cum laude in Islamic Law and Human Rights from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany, in 2020. His doctoral dissertation received the STAEDTLER Foundation’s Award for Outstanding Dissertation in 2020. Dr. Saeed’s research mainly focuses on Islamic law, Islamic studies, and the intersection of custom and human rights, with an emphasis on Afghanistan. His scholarly work includes several articles in national and international academic journals as well as his 2022 monograph, Islam, Custom, and Human Rights in Afghanistan. He was also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Afghan Legal Studies from 2017 to 2022. Through scholarly analysis and engagement with current legal discourse, he aims to amplify critical perspectives on women’s rights in Afghanistan today.
In addition to his academic endeavors, Dr. Saeed has held several significant public and institutional roles. He served as a member and vice president of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC) for four years. He has also served as a consultant on several Afghanistan-related projects at the CMI research center in Bergen, Norway, and at the Max-Planck Foundation in Heidelberg, Germany. Recently, he has served as a visiting scholar at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) at the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, where he taught Islamic Law.