Editorial

Thank God! The fourth edition of the Journal of Religious studies has reached you and available for perusal. Although research work in Pakistan and especially in a far-flung area like Chitral even more difficult to carry out and no less than a herculean task, yet I am all praise for my colleagues who made it a success in spite of all odds.

Dear readers! The human nature right from the very outset has been engrossed with the curiosity of knowing the truth of the existence of all things, which is a never-ending process of research. It is the demand of the divine will that man uses his wisdom and critical thinking as a guiding force. The truth of the matter is that Islam has outrightly refuted renouncing completely worldly gains. We have to spend our lives in this world by keeping in line with the realities of life and not avoiding them. We have to find out the reality of things like the warmness of the sunlight, the hotness, and coolness of the air, the light of the moon, the stars on the milky ways, the rotation of the earth, the uneasy waves of the sea, the snowcapped mountains and colors of the rainbow. All that is what we mean from research, curiosity, deep reflection and critical thinking. The University of Chitral is, therefore, making an effort towards that end by bringing out this journal to provide a platform for the knowledge seekers to employ their potentials for the greater benefit of future generations.

Respected readers! The publication of this edition of the Journal of Religious Studies bears special significance in the sense that not only international standards have been taken into account while making a selection of all research articles but also adopted all technical and artistic measures in the light of the directives of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) as listed below:

  1. The Journal has been published in line with the latest version of the Open Journal System (OJS).
  2. In addition to print, electronic and CDR ISSN, Linking ISSN has also been obtained.
  3. All the published articles have been published with Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
  4. The Journal has been registered with international archiving agencies like CLOKSS and PKP Open Archives Harvester along with the KEEPERS Registry for safe archiving of the articles.

Moreover, the Journal has been linked with the following indexation agencies for easy online access, reference, and citations:

  1. ROAD (Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources)
  2. Google Scholar
  3. Crossref. Org
  4. World Cat
  5. ERIHPLUS (European Reference Index for Humanities and Social Sciences).
  6. Cross Mark
  7. DOI
  8. EBSCO Host
  9. Al-Manhal
  10. IRI (Islamic Research Index)

The process of indexation with A&HCI and SSCI is in its last stages. A target has been set to take the Journal to ISI and Scopus within the next two years.

Once we have achieved the target in compliance with the proposed instructions of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan for publication of standard journals, we shall make strenuous efforts to include this Journal in the list of the journals of international repute and I am pretty sure that we shall soon get to this stage with the cooperation of our colleagues and joint venturers in search of knowledge.

We shall wait for your useful suggestions and critical opinions in order to enhance the academic standard of the Journal and boost our confidence level.

 

Badshah Munir Bukhari
Editor-in-Chief