ixabout the editors
and contributors
K
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