Islamic Voices

In his introduction to the multi-volume reference work Voices of Islam, Vincent J. Cornell wrote: “It has long been a truism to say that Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the world. However, the situation expressed by this statement is more than a little ironic because Islam is also on of the most studied religions in the world, after Christianity and Judaism” (Cornell, 2007, vii). The Editorial Board of the Journal of Religious and Theological Information is pleased to announce this special double issue devoted to Islam. Included in this special issue are five studies devoted to the history and phenomenology of religion from an Islamic perspective: Early Muslim Scholars in Religionswissenchaft: A Study of Zoroastrianism in Islamic Religious Traditions (Muhammad Azizan Subjan), Resisting Anthropomorphism: Evaluation of Abū Sulaymān Al-Khaṭṭābī’s (D. 388/998) Approach to Ṣifāt Traditions (Umar Muhammad Noor and Usman Abur Hamdi), The Symbolic Efficacy of Plants in Rituals and Socio-Religious Ceremonies in Morocco, Northwest of Africa (Noureddine Chaachouay and Lahcen Zidane), Presence, Manifestation, and Visitation in Abrahamic Religions: The Notion of “Presence” in Shi’ism (Seyed Amir Hossein Asghari), Analysis of Friday Sermon Duration: Intellectual Reflection of Classical and Contemporary Islamic Scholars (Usman Abur Hamdi and Azwar Iskandar) and What Can the Prophet Muhammad Teach us About Pandemics? (Abdulaziz BinTaleb and Ahmad Y. Aseery). Researchers looking further for authentic voices describing their Islamic faith can be referred to “What is Sunni Islam?”, “What I Shiite Islam?”, and “What is Sufism?”, all of which can be found in the first volume of Cornell’s work.