Shiite Islam: Orthodoxy or Heterodoxy?

About the Author

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] which forms part of the Department of Philosophy of the School of Graduate Studies at John F. Kennedy Argentine University. He 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 has reading comprehension of classical and Semitic languages.

From 1989 to the present, he 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 Hammādī 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 work 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 A. Morrow's Allāh Lexicon Project at Northern State University's Department of Modern Languages in South Dakota. From 1989 to the present, Luis Alberto 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 Islāmic Research and Documentation (CEDIMS) and the Editorial Center for Digital Islāmic Texts (CETEDI). These research centers function within the Department of Social and Political Studies for Africa and the Middle East with offices at the Universidad Católica Argentina de La Plata (Sede Bernal) as entity associated in research projects, translation, and edition of traditional Islāmic texts with the Center for Oriental Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Santa Fe, Argentina) and the Department of Modern Languages at Northern State University in South Dakota in the United States.

As textbook Editor, Luis Alberto Vittor has been also 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 Islāmic literature, thought, art, culture, and spirituality.

As an author, he has published Simbolismo e iniciación en la poesía de Alberto Girri, [Symbolism and Initiation in the Poetry of Alberto Girri], Fraterna Publishers (Buenos Aires 1990) and El Islām Šhi'ita: ¿ortodoxia o heterodoxia? in digital format, prepared by the Biblioteca Islámica Ahlul Bayt in Seville, Spain, in 1998.

His forthcoming books include: Los templarios y el Islām: milicia temporal y caballería espiritual (2006) and Arquitectura de luz y edificación espiritual: el simbolismo antrópico del Imām en el arte constructivodel Islām [Architecture of Light and Spiritual Edification: The Anthropic Symbolism of the Imām in the Constructive Art of Islām] (2007), both of which will be published by Editorial Sotabur in Soria, Spain. In collaboration with Dr. John A. Morrow and Barbara Castleton, Professor Vittor has completed the book Arabic, Islām, and the Allāh Lexicon (2006) which is published by the Edwin Mellen Press.