Only rarely do scholarly books contribute to a new understanding of present day global problems, but this one might well be the exception: it addresses two very different groups of readers, those in the western as well as in the Arab world.

Its main subject is how Arab scholarship in the Middle Ages and long afterwards was characterized by a search for diversity, resulting in plurality and tolerance. This study also explains contemporary religious conflict and extremism as a result of the infringement of Western thinking on Arab scholarship, which had the effect of diminishing the social and intellectual achievements of ambiguity.

The author is the outstanding German Arabist and 2013 Leibnitz Prize laureate, Thomas Bauer, who combines a solid base in philology with intelligent creativity and deep insight in present day developments.

In an earlier publication (Thomas Bauer, 2005, “Mamluk Literature: Misunderstandings and New Approaches,” in Mamluk Studies Review IX-2, 105–32; http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/MSR_IX-2_2005-Bauer.pdf), the author discussed the age-old view, held both in the East and in the West, that the period of Arab civilization stretching from the middle of the thirteenth century until the campaign of Napoleon in Egypt (1798) was characterized by intellectual stagnation and the copying of earlier intellectual achievements without significantly building upon them. As a consequence, more recent scholars on both sides have been much less interested in this period. In his reassessment of this widely accepted historiographical conclusion, Bauer showed that it was actually a period of continuing growth and lively debate, resulting in ever renewing ideas and attitudes.

His present study begins with an analysis of the methods of early Arab scholars, whose purpose was initially to safeguard a correct version of the Qurʾan as the word of God. But from the beginning, when the Qurʾanic material was still being collected, all kinds of textual variants occurred that aroused discussion about the authenticity of the text. One would expect a process of separating the “good” from the “bad”, but that proved to be impossible. These qirāʾāt (modes of reading/reciting) were mainly caused by the—then still—defective Arabic script. For example, a verb like nunshizu could be read as nunshiru. This resulted in an ambiguous interpretation of part of the Qurʾanic verse 2:259 (in Arberry's translation): “And look at the bones, how we shall set them up. . .”, but it could be read alternatively: “. . . how we shall raise them to life . . .”(Q 2:259). This example is typical. Both versions are feasible and neither of them changes the meaning of the verse as a whole.

Bauer divides the method that the collectors of the Qurʾanic text used as follows: Obtaining as many modes of reading as possible; sorting out the excess ambiguous readings and constraining its proportions if need be; and dividing them according to grades of probability.

Quintessential in this process was the ambition to preserve as many of these readings as possible, instead of reducing them to one canonic reading, because these scholars realized that God in His endless wisdom might have meant to convey any one of these meanings, but also that He might have intended to reveal them to human kind together as one in all their ambiguity. In other words: who are we to sort out Gods intentions?

Besides the Qurʾan, the hadith (the sayings and acts of the prophet Mohammed), had to be studied as well, because the Qurʾan as a guideline for desirable human behavior proved insufficient. Both Qurʾan and hadith, were to form the basis of Islamic jurisprudence, but collectors of hadith encountered problems comparable with those of the collectors of the Qurʾanic texts, which meant that the same procedures were followed: collecting, selecting, and evaluating along a sliding scale of probability.

All this resulted in an acceptance of ambiguity, next to including openness and frankness, not only in scholarly studies, but also in other domains of life. Bauer discusses two of them in which he perceives the same kinds of openness and tolerance: Arabic poetry and the realm of sexuality. Arabic poetry is by no means prudish; on the contrary: homosexuality, debauchery, and lust were frequent themes in Arabic poetry and prose.

Bauer speculates on what has gone wrong; why this open and frank attitude to life disappeared. In his view the nineteenth century encounter of the Arab world with the Western Cartesian method of strict dualism might well have been a decisive factor. In fact, he is convinced that the expulsion of ambiguity lies at the basis of salafist and other extremist tendencies in the modern Arab world.

This book should definitely be translated into English for a wider readership. Books in general do not solve fundamental sociocultural problems, but by reconsidering the heritage of the past they can help us to think again.