Vol. 5 No. 2 (2026): A Body of Work, a Field, an Agenda: Roberto Marín Guzmán and the Study of Islam and the Middle East from Costa Rica

Presentation

A Work, a Field, an Agenda: Roberto Marín Guzmán and Studies on Islam and the Middle East from Costa Rica

Dr. Roberto Marín Guzmán (1955-2024) became one of the leading references in the Social Sciences in Costa Rica. He was the author who introduced studies on Islam and the Arab world to the academic world, after having achieved professional training in these fields in Mexico and the United States. He also developed his academic work at the University of Costa Rica, as well as at other universities and research centers worldwide in which he participated as a visiting professor, with research stays and other forms of academic collaboration. In addition, it should be noted that he twice won the Aquileo J. Echeverría National History Prize, in 1986 and 2026 with the works Islam: ideology and history and Society, politics and popular protest in Muslim Spain, respectively.  After his death, the International Journal of Asian Studies of the University of Costa Rica offers this dossier that delves into the analysis of the vast work of Dr. Marín Guzmán based on the contribution of five people who collaborated closely with him and delve into the entire thematic, theoretical, methodological and heuristic range of his academic production.

The issue begins with an unpublished text by Roberto Marín Guzmán on Islamophobia, a topic that he explored in the last part of his academic life from a Central American perspective. In this way, Dr. Marín Guzmán offers the global condition that Islamophobia has already presented for many decades and explores it with his characteristic assiduity and thoroughness. Subsequently, the issue opens the dossier and proposes five readings of the work of this great Costa Rican academic. The first text proposes the way in which Dr. Marín Guzmán established religious studies on Islam in Costa Rica as a disciplinary field, based on his intellectual and academic itinerary between 1978 and 1990. Then, the following article proposes a detailed analysis of the construction of studies on the Middle East developed by Roberto Marín from his studies on the conflicts in the region, with special emphasis on the Palestinian-Israeli one, very present in academic production from early on.

Likewise, the dossier then offers a text that makes a meticulous theoretical scrutiny of the concept of the political in Dr. Marín's work and the way in which the construction of this theoretical universe is imbricated in the very historicity of Islam, widely studied by the author. Subsequently, an article is offered which takes as a starting point the work of Marín Guzmán in relation to his analyses of protest movements and revolts in the Islamic world and undertakes an in-depth investigation into the Panthay revolt in China (1856-1873). This text allows us to see the theoretical richness of Roberto Marín's work to explore the various edges that the Islamic world presents in other geographical and cultural latitudes to which Islam arrived. Finally, the dossier ends with the detailed study of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the work of Marín Guzmán in the long duration in which the colonial conditions of the historical phenomenon are explored and the approach of subaltern studies from which the analysis of the work of Roberto Marín can also be nourished.

In addition to the dossier, the issue offers in the refereed section three articles that analyze historical phenomena related to the Islamic and Arab world that complement the elements discussed by the authors regarding the work of Roberto Marín Guzmán. The first of them is a text that delves into the way in which Ibadi Islam is intertwined in the foreign policy of Oman, a country in the Arabian Peninsula that has had a very particular agenda in the region from the 1970s to the present. The following article offers a complex look, from the psychology of religion, on the consequences of the destruction to which Palestine has been subjected, but with the aim of finding within the morass that this people is experiencing, forms of hope about their history and their future. Finally, this section ends with a text that reviews, particularly from the national censuses, the migratory processes of the Arab populations of the Levant to Costa Rica from the second half of the twentieth century to the year 2022.

Finally, the issue offers the review of three books that are part of the latest published works, co-authored, by Roberto Marín Guzmán, which demonstrate his prolific production. Likewise, this allows us to verify the author's incessant search to continue with academic studies on Islam and the Arab world, in the first instance, from a historical perspective, with a scrupulous review of unpublished sources, and in the second place, with a look from the present of both worlds that were the center of attention of his academic works and his commitment to academic research.

Needless to say, we strongly invite the reader to delve into the reading of the immense work of Dr. Marín Guzmán, an indisputable reference in these thematic areas in Latin America. At the same time, it is also expected to stimulate new analyses of his academic works, which offer so many edges due to the insatiable thirst for knowledge that characterized him. 

Esteban Sánchez Solano

Universidad de Costa Rica,

San José, Costa Rica