Gema Martín Muñoz was born
in Madrid in 1955. She has a doctorate
in Arabic and Islamic Studies and is a professor in Sociology of the Arabic and
Islamic world in the Autónoma University of Madrid. She frequently gives lectures on this topic, and has been a
visiting professor at the universities of Harvard, Roma Tre, Georgetown,
Teherán, Mexico, Havana, El Quds (Palestine), Cairo, and Algiers. Among her most recent publications are Islam,
Modernism and the West (1999), El estado árabe. Crisis de
legitimidad y contestación islamista (The Arabic State. Crisis of Islamic
Legitimacy and Reply) 2000, and Percepciones sociales y culturales
entre España y Marruecos (Social and Cultural Perceptions Between Spain
and Morocco) 2001. She is a regular collaborator in press, such as the
newspaper El País and the magazine Claves de razón práctica.