Encyclopedia of Islam

ix

about the editors 

and contributors

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Series Editor

J. Gordon Melton is the director of the Institute for 

the Study of American Religion in Santa Bar-

bara, California. He holds an M.Div. from the 

Garrett Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from 

Northwestern University. Melton is the author 

of American Religions: An Illustrated History, The 

Encyclopedia of American Religions,  Religious 

Leaders of America, and several comprehensive 

works on Islamic culture, African-American 

religion, cults, and alternative religions. He has 

written or edited more than three dozen books 

and anthologies as well as numerous papers and 

articles for scholarly journals. He is the series 

editor for Religious Information Systems, which 

supplies data and information in religious stud-

ies and related fields. Melton is a member of the 

American Academy of Religion, the Society for 

the Scientific Study of Religion, the American 

Society of Church History, the Communal Stud-

ies Association, and the Society for the Study of 

Metaphysical Religion.

Volume Editor

Juan E. Campo, associate professor of religious 

studies at the University of California, Santa 

Barbara, holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the 

University of Chicago’s History of Religions 

program. He specializes in the comparative 

study of the cultural formations of Islam in the 

Middle East and South Asia, sacred space and 

pilgrimage, and political Islam in the contexts 

of modernity. His research has taken him to 

Egypt, where he has lived, studied, or taught 

for nearly six years, as well as India, Saudi 

Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore, 

Thailand, and Israel. Professor Campo’s first 

book, The Other Sides of Paradise: Explorations 

in the Religious Meanings of Domestic Space in 

Islam, won the American Academy of Religion’s 

award for excellence, in 1991. He has edited 

or contributed articles to a number of leading 

reference works, including Merriam-Webster’s 

Encyclopedia of World Religions, Encyclopedia of 

the Qur’an, and the Macmillan Encyclopedia of 

Islam and the Muslim World. His current projects 

include a comparative study of modern Muslim, 

Hindu, and Christian pilgrimage.

Contributors

Fahad A. Alhomoudi holds a Ph.D. from McGill 

University. He is the vice dean of academic 

research at al-Imam Muhammad bin Saud 

Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He 

specializes in Islamic thought and Islamic law, 

with a focus on its origins. He is the author of 

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