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Islam. She provides much useful information on (and some good analysis of) many

single issues of great relevance for the study of contemporary Islamic thought.

Unfortunately, the broadness of the eld she covers in geographical terms and the

sheer number of authors she discusses do not allow for a more detailed analysis of, for

example, the interests of national states in the formation of Quranic exegesis, a topic

one might have expected to have been treated in greater depth given the title of her

study.

LUTZ BERGER

DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2012.0062

NOTE

1 Lutz Berger, Religionsbehrde und Mill Gr. Zwei Varianten eines traditionalistischen

Islams in der Trkei in R. Lohlker (ed.), Haditstudien Die berlieferung des Prophetenim Gespch. Festschrift fr Prof. Dr. Tilman Nagel (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2009)pp. 4276).

The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and

Plurality in Religion. By Abdulkarim Soroush. Translated by Nilou Mobasser, and

edited with an analytical introduction by Forough Jahanbakhsh. Leiden and Boston:

Brill, 2009. Pp. l + 355. e113.00.

Abdolkarim Soroush (Abd al-Karm Sursh), born in Tehran in 1945, is without

doubt one of the most important and original contemporary Muslim thinkers; in fact,

in April 2005 he was named one ofTime Magazines 100 most inuential people

worldwide, and portrayed as the leading intellectual force behind the Islamicrepublics pro-democracy movement.1 His name usually appears alongside the likes

of Fazlur Rahman, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Mohammed Arkoun, Ebrahim Moosa,

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari.

While his various writings and public statements are easily accessible for the reader

of Persian through Soroushs own website (www.drsoroush.com), an English

readership has had to wait for someone to take on the challenging task of

translating them into English. After the publication of Reason, Freedom, andDemocracy in Islam, translated, edited and introduced by the two sociologists

Mahmoud and Ahmad Sadri),2 the volume under review presents the second

anthology of Soroushs writings in English, with an emphasis on his second creative

period, which coincided with the rst presidency of Muammad Khtam in Iran

between 1997 and 2001. What gives this anthology additional credibility is that

the translator, Persian media monitor of the BBC Nilou Mobasser (Nl Mubaar),

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had, prior to her untimely recent passing in March of this year, been intimately

acquainted with the complex language of Soroush and is considered one of his most

prolic translators.

The title of the anthology is somewhat misleading, as it suggests that what the reader

will nd between the book covers is only a full translation of Soroushs seminal work

Bas-i tajribah-i nabav (The Expansion of Prophetic Experience) from 1999. In

fact, however, the editor, yet another scholar with intimate knowledge of the thought

of Soroush, has decided to put together a selection of chapters of the named work,

supplemented with two chapters fromrh-yi mustaqm(1998), one fromAkhlq-i

khudyn (2001), and ve shorted pieces from and relating to the controversy that

took place in 2008 between Soroush and Grand Ayatollah Jafar Subn(b. 1929) on

the formers views elaborated inBas-i tajribah-i nabav. Hence, what is presented to

the reader is a fairly comprehensive overview of the thoughts Soroush has developed

during the time of relative moderation in, and opening of Iran under, Khtam,

although this could (and perhaps should) have been better reected in the title of this

anthology.

The various translated chapters have been arranged in two parts, the rst dealing with

Soroushs understanding of core concepts of religion, such as revelation, scripture and

prophecy, while the second focuses more on the practical implications of such an

understanding of these concepts. Unfortunately, the ve communiqus between

Soroush and Subn, which relate very much to chapter one on The Expansion of

Prophetic Experiencehave not been arranged immediately following that chapter, but

rather as appendices following part two. Therefore, while the editor recommends in a

footnote in her introduction that these communiqus should be read alongside the rst

chapter (p. xxxv, n. 16), the arrangement of the various texts in the present volume

suggests otherwise.

The lengthy editors introduction attempts to present Soroushs philosophically inspired

religious thought in general, and that of his creative period between 1997 and 2001 in

particular, in a nutshell, before an outline of the ideas prevalent in the two parts of this

volume is given and put into a wider context. Admittedly, this is a very ambitious

undertaking that requires deep insight in both the Islamic textual tradition from its

beginning to the present and contemporary philosophical and sociological thought

in West and East. Therefore, one should perhaps be more lenient with criticism of

the occasional terminological inconsistencies. Indeed, there might be systematic reasons

for this which cannot be blamed on the editor: after all, it is difcult to place Soroush

solely within one particular academic discipline. As with the oft-referred to Muammad

Shh Iqbl (d. 1938), Soroushs thought resides on the often even mystically

charged interface of philosophy, theology, political theory, and sometimes even

sociology. Consequently, Soroush employs the argumentative methodology and

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technical terminology of each of these distinct academic elds without any prior

warning. However, one may have wished for such an analytical introduction of

considerable length, especially one which aims at providing a comprehensive outline of

Soroushs ideas, to address this issue and arrange for greater terminological clarity. The

strange and occasionally faulty transliteration of Persian and Arabic that does not follow

any widely acknowledged standard does not help matters.

The major downside of this book which, as the quote of the recently deceased British

theologian John Hicks on the back cover urges, Muslims and non-Muslims alike

should read, is certainly the exorbitantly high sales price. For better accessibility,

especially outside Europe and North America, the editor might have selected a less

pricey publisher that would eventually arrange even for an affordable paperbackedition, as OUP did in the case of the Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam

anthology mentioned above. As it is, however, the outreach of the volume under

review will remain somewhat limited, and readers of Persian remain therefore well

advised to download the works of Soroush in their original language for free from the

authors personal website.

JAN-PETER HARTUNG

DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2012.0063

NOTES

1 www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972656_1972712_1974251,00.html

2 This anthology in English translation was published by Oxford University Press as a hardback

in 2000, and in paperback in 2002.

Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Quran as Literature and Culture.

Edited by Roberta Sterman Sabbath. Biblical Interpretation Series, 98. Leiden and

Boston: Brill, 2009. Pp. 534 + xxii. e176.00/$245.00.

Intended as a methodologically diverse, comparative collection to be used in

undergraduate studies to broaden understanding of all three sacred texts and to nd

ways that they in turn speak to each other (Preface),Sacred Tropes consists of 33

(generally short) essays devoted to the Tanakh, the New Testament and the Quran.

These are based on papers given at meetings held over a three-year period by the

Modern Language Association, American Comparative Literature Association, Pacic

Ancient and Modern Literary Association, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Forum Lecture series. Contributors are drawn from various backgrounds, in terms of

both disciplinary and geographical areas of study, thus, besides articles by scholars

from Quranic, Tanakh and New Testament studies, there are also contributions from

356 Journal of Qur anic Studies