“This book was written in a style that I hope will be read as a conversation…I hope what people will take from it, is that I am positing some general ethics regarding the ways in which Muslims engage with the world through our faith and politics, and that it is really the subsequent discussions that will help to provide flesh on the bones of my thinking. So please, do write to me, and let me know what you think of what I have written, and if I have written something wrong, then hopefully we can refine these ideas until we have something that will look more like a manual for emancipation”

In my work on the Bible and Qur’an, I have often found that early Western authors sought to understand the Qur’an in light of the Biblical tradition. Any difference they found in the Qur’an they saw as a mistake that Muhammad made in understanding or retelling the story. However, more recently scholarship, such as that of Marilyn Waldman, demonstrates that the Qur’an has a particular goal in using Biblical material.