Shi’ite Islam: Orthodoxy Or Heterodoxy? Second Amended and Amplified Edition

About the Author

Prof. Luis Alberto Vittor

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Professor Luis Alberto Vittor is a Professional Technical Support Person for Scientific Research at the Center for Research into the Philosophy and History of Religion (CIFHIRE) [Centro de Investigaciones en Filosofía e Historia de las Religiones]. The Center forms part of the Department of Philosophy at the School of Graduate Studies at John F. Kennedy Argentine University.

Professor Vittor is a writer, research scholar, lecturer, cultural journalist, and translator. His areas of expertise include medieval literature, religious symbolism, and the philosophy of Eastern religions, particularly with relation to Islām, the Middle East, Asia, and the Far East. He is proficient in multiple modern languages, and has reading comprehension of Classical and Semitic languages.

From 1989 to the present, Professor Vittor has served as a Professional Technical Support Person for Scientific Research. He has collaborated on the Critical Spanish Edition Project of the Coptic Library of Nag Ḥammādī under the direction of Dr. Francisco García Bazán. This project is sponsored by the National Commission for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), an organism dependent on the Secretary of Science and Technology (SECYT) of the National Government of the Republic of Argentina.

As part of his work as a Professional Technical Support Person for Scientific Research, he edits and reviews scholarly works in his areas of expertise, including graduate and post-graduate research projects. In his role as Professional Technical Support Person for Scientific Research, he has contributed to many different projects, including, Dr. John Andrew Morrow’s Allāh Lexicon Project at Northern State University’s Department of Modern Languages in South Dakota.

From 1989 to the present, Professor Vittor has been the Editorial Secretary for the academic journal Epimeleia: Revista sobre Estudios Tradicionales, the official organ of the CIFHIRE. He is also the Director of the Mullā Sadrā Center for Islamic Research and Documentation (CEDIMS) and the Editorial Center for Digital Islamic Texts (CETEDI). These research centers operate within the Department of Social and Political Studies for Africa and the Middle East, and have offices at the Universidad Católica Argentina de La Plata (Sede Bernal). Professor Vittor also participates in research projects, translations, and editions of traditional Islamic texts, in conjunction with the Center for Oriental Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Santa Fe, Argentina). He is also the Coordinator for Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Center for Oriental Studies at the University of Rosario in Santa Fe, Argentina.

As textbook editor, Professor Vittor has also been the director of collections of Fraterna Publishers of Buenos Aires from 1989-1991; literary director of the cultural supplement Letras e ideas from 1990-1992; director of the Journal of Oriental Studies, Atma-Jñana, from 1989-1992. As a cultural journalist, he has published various articles and essays dealing with Islamic literature, thought, art, culture, and spirituality. He is also the author of several books, including, Simbolismo e iniciación en la poesía de Alberto Girri (Fraterna, 1990), El islam shiita: ¿ortodoxia o heterodoxia? (Biblioteca Islámica Ahlul Bayt, 1998), and Shī‘ite Islām: Orthodoxy or Heterodoxy (Anṣariyān, 2006).

In collaboration with Dr. John Andrew Morrow and Professor Barbara Castleton, Professor Vittor has completed the book Arabic, Islām, and the Allāh Lexicon (2006), published by the Edwin Mellen Press. He has published introductory studies for three of Dr. Morrow’s books, Amerindian Elements in the Poetry of Rubén Darío: The Alter Ego as the Indigenous Other (Edwin Mellen 2008), Amerindian Elements in the Poetry of Ernesto Cardenal: A Contemporary Voice for an Ancient People (Edwin Mellen 2009), and The Encyclopedia of Islamic Herbal Medicine (McFarland, 2010). He is currently collaborating with Dr. Morrow on various projects.