Through a bibliography grouped by subject and a chronology of the history of Islam since its beginnings in the year 610 A.D., Gomez reviews the terms used by the media “that don’t always have an easy translation.”
The work includes words like “jihad,” “burka,”and “sharia,” touches on the differences between the various religious and political factions (Sunni, Shia), while noting the history and origins of the university and other institutions in the Islamic world.
The confusions begin with the distinction between Islam and Islamism, terms that the Royal Spanish Academy defines as synonyms.
“In Islamic tradition Islam is related to religious aspects such as doctrine, theology, philosophy and even sociology, while Islamism is the ideological adaptation of Islamic precepts for political ends,” the author said.
Another common error is the confusing of “Arab” and “Muslim,” since Arabs were the first people to convert to Islam and Arabic is the language in which the Koran is written.
The professor explained that “Arab” expresses a cultural concept and is the name given to people from a particular region or country, “Muslim” refers to a person who believes in Islam as a religion, and the term “Islamic” is used for all non-human elements related to Islam such as its doctrine and philosophy.
Luz Gomez began preparing the dictionary 10 years ago but it was after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in the year 2001, with the increasing presence of those terms in the media, that she realized the “urgent need” for a work that would explain the semantics of Islam.
The dictionary has indices of individuals, dynasties, peoples, tribes, places and institutions that facilitate the search, while approximately 80 percent of the entries include a quote from the press documenting the use of the term by the western media.
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