Christoph Burgmer (Ed.). The Ko- ran in Dispute. The Luxenberg The- sis: The Debate so Far. [in German only: Streit um den Koran. Die Lu- xenberg-Debatte: Standpunkte und Hintergründe]. Verlag Hans Schiler: Kempten, 2005, 152 pp. 16,00 €.

The year 2000 saw the pseudonymous publication of “The Reading of the Koran” setting out Christoph Luxenberg’s thesis that certain passages of the Koran should be understood not according to the Arabic sense of the words but to an underlying Syriac-Aramaic sense, thereby giving the Koran a whole new meaning. The present collection of essays is not limited to the views of advocates and opponents of the thesis but contains interviews and general articles on the current state of Koran studies which will appeal also to the non-specialist reader interested in this field.