New Perspectives on the Qur’an

This heavy volume composed in memory of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d. 2010) is part of Routledge Studies in the Qur’an. It consists of a Foreword by Abdolkarim Soroush, a substantial Introduction by the editor, and 20 articles mainly contributed by American, British, and German Orientalists. All of it is resulting from the 2nd Notre Dame Conference in 2009, on The Qur’an in its Historical Context and a sequence to Reynold’s earlier book with the same title (2007).

Alas, only eight of the contributors are Muslims, and Western pro-Islamic voices, like Harald Motzki, are marginalized. In stark contrast, prominence is given to authors who, like John Wansborough, Arthur Jeffery, Gerd R. Puin, Günter Lüling and the secretive Christoph “Luxenberg”, write about the alleged hidden or dark origins of the Qur’an and its supposed Jewish or Christian “antecedents”. Real Orientalist scholars, like Angelika Neuwirth, do not even mention types like Lüling and consorts.