Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.

Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder

Asma Uddin

Legal Scholar, Religion & Society Program

Asma T. Uddin is a professor, author, and lawyer specializing in religious liberty. She has written two books, When Islam Is Not a Religion (2019) and The Politics of Vulnerability (2021). Uddin is an Assistant Professor of Law at Michigan State University, where she teaches constitutional law and international human rights. Previously, she served as Legal Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. While there, she helped litigate religious liberty cases in both international and domestic tribunals, including at the U.S. Supreme Court. Uddin served two terms as an expert advisor on religious liberty to the Organization for Security and Operation in Europe, was a term-member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has held fellowships at Harvard and UCLA. She currently sits on the Board of Advisors for the University of Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Initiative and in 2026 began serving as a two-year legal scholar for the Religion & Society Program at The Aspen Institute.

Authored by Asma:

Whose Belief Counts as Religion
Blog Posts

Whose Belief Counts as Religion

Who gets to decide what counts as religion? Religious pluralism depends on protecting beliefs even when they fall outside the American majority’s understanding of faith. When outsiders are permitted to determine which beliefs are genuinely religious, the freedom of all religious communities is put at risk.