Sado Faraji

Sado Faraji is a historian, theologian, and author from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He writes from the margins of empire, recovering the stories that colonial powers, religious establishments, and political dynasties have preferred left buried.

His work spans continents and centuries, but returns always to the same question: who controls the story, and who benefits from the silence? In The Buried Truth: How Power Hijacked Islam After the Prophet, he traces the succession crisis at the heart of the Sunni-Shia divide using overwhelmingly Sunni sources. In Shadows of the Desert, he investigates the untold alliances behind the birth of modern Saudi Arabia. In Blind Obedience, he examines how theology has been weaponized to justify empire. And in The Bridge of Hope and Sorrow, he turns to fiction to carry readers through Rwanda's genocide and the resilience that outlasted it.

Sado writes as both an insider and an outsider — a historian trained to follow evidence wherever it leads, and an African Muslim writing back against narratives that have long excluded voices like his own. His research draws on primary Sunni, Shia, and historical sources, and his manuscripts have been reviewed by Islamic scholars across both traditions.

He lives and writes in Dar es Salaam.