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 Propheten
im 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 of Time Magazines 100 most inuential people
worldwide, and portrayed as the leading intellectual force behind the Islamic
republics 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, and
Democracy 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),
354 Journal of Quranic Studies
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 from rh-yi mustaqm (1998), one from Akhlq-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 in Bas-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 Experience have 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
Book Reviews 355
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 paperback
edition, 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 Quranic Studies