Britslam has launched Volume 1 of Shi'a Affairs:
There are many books and journals that address themes within the broad study of Islam and Muslims but to date there has been no journal or other concentrated effort to assemble information upon Shi’ism as an identity, distinct politically, religiously and culturally from other forms of Islam. Literature that does focus upon Shi’ism is disproportionately the product of propaganda and counter-propaganda rooted in Islamic sectarian polemics or a neo-orientalism developed from Christian and Muslim encounter (polemic).
This lack of a resource for balanced, defined, peer reviewed, authoritative literature has reinforced stereotypes of heterodoxy, minority and exclusiveness applied to both religious and political Shi’ism which has led to cultural misrepresentations and impeded the development of contemporary understanding and knowledge of 15 to 20% of the world’s Muslim population. The term Shi’ism is often associated solely with the 12 Imam confession, however the definition supplied by professor Montgomery Watt in ‘Islamic Creeds’ (1994) includes Isma’ilism and Zaydism and this seems to be an academically acceptable limit for the scope of the anthology’s primary typological criterion. Shi’ism with its distinctive structures, theological interpretations and political influence in the Middle East, South Asia, South West Asia and an increasingly influential diaspora in Africa and the ‘West’ is a subject of international and academic importance that demands an independent literature.