This outstanding work fills a major lacuna in both the study of the Qur'ân as scripture and the study of Muslim faith, practice, and sprituality.  It is an estimable scholarly and intellectual accomplishment that will be of significant interest to any student of Islam or the general history of religion.’ William Graham, Harvard University Navid Kermani, himself an highly accomplished and honored writer of artistic prose, sets out to (and succeeds) in articulating the Muslim response to the Qur'an as a work of inimitable beauty, a beauty, moreover, that is only available to those capable of reading it in Arabic. Reading Kermani has opened me up to an even greater appreciation than ever of the Muslim tradition and awakened in me an even greater desire to someday read the Qur'an in Arabic. The book is anything but a "fundamentalist" defense of the Qur'an on aesthetic terms but rather a beautiful evocation of the meaning of that beauty for Muslims in the past and today. Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley Navid Kermani has written one of the most insightful books on religion to appear in decades. His approach is ground breaking, a dazzling display of his profound knowledge of Islam, and his extraordinary insight into the nature of religious experience. Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College