Lecture Series with Prof. Juan Campo
Encyclopedia of Islam is the recent work of Juan Campo who addressed the guests of Saturday evening lecture series about the content of his book. In his presentation, Dr Campo said that among the world’s religions, few have attained the historical, cultural. and civilizational stature and diversity that Islam has. He added that despite the record of some 14 centuries of such achievements, knowledge about Islam and Muslims has been very limited, especially in the Americas. Dr Campo said that today there still exists despite the significant steps forward, a widespread hunger in the US and many other countries for even the most basic knowledge about Muslims- their religion, histories, cultures and politics.
Dr Campo stated that the scope of the book emphasizes the following subject areas which are:
1. Islam as the religion of the Muslims
2. Islam as an Abrahamic religion
3. Islamicate civilizations and cultures
4. Islam in the contemporary world
Prof Campo added that to increase the appeal of this study for use by students and teachers, entries like camel, cat, dog, horse, children, comic books and the cinema are also added.
In the first pages of encyclopedia, the chronology of Islam is presented to the readers. with 570 being the birth of Prophet Muhammad, and 620 the year of Hijra, the last entry being the year of 2007 for the unfortunate assassination of Benazir Ali Bhutto- Pakistan’s political leader.
Then entries from A-Z follow, where the first entry is Abbasid Caliphate which is one and a half page long, ziyara- An Arabic word being the last entry meaning visits to the Holy Places. The Bibliography and a detailed index are the last two parts of the encyclopedia.
After the lecture, Dr Juan Campo signed the encyclopedia he authored and edited which is 750 pages which can both be found in hard and softcover.
The event came to an end with the self served food.