It's taken me quite a while to read Ziauddin Sardar's Reading The Qur'an - The Contemporary Relevance of the Sacred Text of Islam and I'm very glad I didn't rush, which I might easily have done, given the enthusiasm the text evoked in me. Just about every page was inspirational - or, rather, the explication of the sacred text was so faithful to the spirit informing it that it caught fire from the original. Time and again I found myself thinking: yes, I knew The Qur'an was saying this but I didn't articulate for myself those ideas with this kind of clarity or intensity.
At times, I must confess to feeling some degree of irritation with the kind of mis-readings (from all sorts of sources, Muslim and otherwise) that Sardar so tellingly criticises. They seem so utterly petty when set against the nobility and sanity of the scripture. But what I'll remember most of all of the experience of finding my way through Reading The Qur'an is the positive exhilaration of being led to grasp some of the depth of that nobility and sanity.
This is by far and away the best guide to a considered reading of The Qur'an I've come across and anyone looking for a sure guide need look no further. I'll certainly be referring to it frequently in future.
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