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In God’s Other Book: The Qur’an between History and Ideology, Mohammad Salama presents a powerful critique of the ways we study and analyze early Islam and its sacred text, filling a glaring hole in our understanding of this formative environment. Interrogating the ideological framework of late antiquity, Salama exposes hidden assumptions that prevent scholars from truly placing Islam in its socio-historical and cultural milieu. He also offers an alternative theoretical and practical model focused on pre-Islamic Arabic cultural production. Foregrounding the indigenous Arab community of seventh-century Hijaz, Salama demonstrates how the Qur’an played an organic role in commenting on, interacting with, and taking sides concerning matters of ethnicity, ethics, dress codes, and social habits. While the study delves into the past, it carries implications for the future: only with renewed attention to the Qur’an itself, in all of its splendor and intricacy, can Western readers engage thoughtfully and ethically not only with Islamic studies but also with the cultures and traditions of those who live according to another book.
Open Access
God’s Other Book The Qur’an between History and Ideology
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Reviews
"Mohammad Salama has written a bold, timely, and uncompromising book. It demands to be read carefully for its erudite and poetic arguments that, in their subtlety, would appear to be counterintuitive to the casual reader. Through an abundance of evidence, a reimagined interpretive frame, and with analytical acumen, Salama offers us insights into an irony of the recent career of western scholarship on the Qurʾān: its effort to draw the Muslim Scripture into a Late Antique landscape may inadvertently overlook reading practices that are sensitive to the Text's agency and indigeneity."—Asad Q. Ahmed, Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at University of California, Berkeley"Salama shows why the Qur’an must be seen as an authentically Arabian literary accomplishment of unparalleled and truly revolutionary kind. In doing so, he provides a welcome corrective to the prevailing Euro-American discourse on God’s Other Book. A milestone in the field of Qur’anic Studies."—Stefan Sperl, Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, University of London