This introduction to the figure of Allah/God in the Quran is written by one of the leading scholars in contemporary Quranic studies, professor of Islamic studies and theology at the University of Notre Dame, Gabriel Said Reynolds. Allah: God in the Qur'an is an engaging and easily read book in which Reynolds skilfully integrates contemporary subjects with pre-modern issues and theological debates. Besides students of Islam, felicitous target audiences would be specialists and students in religious, Jewish, and Christian studies as well as the inquiring lay-person.

As the title indicates, it is primarily a book about Allah according to the Quranic text, but it also endeavours to present interpretations of Allah according to the classical and contemporary Islamic tradition. Reynolds’ focus is mainly on what we could call the ethical or moral God, who swings back and forth between being merciful and compassionate on the one hand, and being punitive and vengeful on the other. From a religious perspective, this oscillation is to a certain degree predictable if one follows the guidance of Allah as put forth in the Quran. Time and again, however, the oscillations and the reasons behind them seem unpredictable and inscrutable, which is why they constitute such a major theological challenge. It is this challenge and its sundry exegetical solutions (and dead ends) that the author investigates with great ease and learning. Being focused on the ethical issues, the book is therefore not an all-inclusive introduction to Quranic Allah, which would include other aspects like, for instance, Allah's function as creator or his role in ritual matters and legal minutiae.

The book opens with the graphic memory of a horrifying scene from 2015, i.e. the ISIS video showing the burning execution/torture of a Jordanian fighter pilot. Despite the agonizing nature of the execution, the video nonetheless opens with a basmala, the Quranic formula often translated as “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate” (a calligraphic basmala is also set just above the English title on the front cover of Reynolds’ monograph). The author then asks “How could a God of mercy be pleased with acts of such cruelty?” The specific question is not answered directly, but Reynolds uses this seeming paradox of mercy and punishment as an investigative dynamo and lens throughout the book. Arguing against scholars wanting to give precedence to the merciful aspect of God, Reynolds contends that both aspects or modes of Allah must be taken into account if one aspires to a more nuanced and complex understanding. Quranic Allah, Reynolds argues, is not simply a God of mercy or punishment “He is both” (p. 5).

Reynolds outlines his aims on p. 14: “My interest is in the Qur'an as a book, and the Bible as a book, and God as a character in both of those books … to emphasize what is distinctive in the Qur'an's portrayal of God …”. It is thus partly a comparative endeavour of two scriptures (or three, if we divide the Bible into the Jewish Tanakh and a Christian Bible), partly a literary and textualist project investigating Allah as a function of texts and rhetoric. The author thereby aims to “uncover the theology of the Qur'an” (p. 16). As such, Reynolds follows in a venerable tradition in modern Biblical studies, that is, the various attempts to write a theology (or theologies) of the Bible. Such “theologies of the Bible” usually strive to negotiate a balance between a purely descriptive and historical approach and a slightly more normative approach that focuses on the binding implications of the text, its contemporary relevance. Although Reynolds asserts that his approach is purely scholarly, the effort to bring the Quran up-to-date in terms of contemporary issues of coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims reveals that the author cannot help but engage normatively with the text. Thus, in the very last sentence in the epilogue, Reynolds suggests that the “the call of the Qur'an” should be based on a theology of good works (referring to verse 48 in sura 5).

Allah: God in the Qurʾan consists of four parts (“Allah and His Book”, “Mercy”, “Vengeance”, “Personal God”), which unfold in subchapters. In part I, Reynolds briefly presents his methodological approach, which is synchronic due to his reservations regarding the standard diachronic approaches to the Quran. In that respect, the author's approach could be compared to that of Brevard Childs in modern Biblical scholarship. The synchronic approach is, as it were, synchronized with a strong emphasis on the distinctive rhetorical and discursive dynamics of the Quranic language, including Reynolds’ own concept of the Quran as a quasi-homiletic work. In the remaining subchapters, the reader is presented with a wealth of Quran passages that shows how Allah is simultaneously both a hard and a soft God, an ambivalent God. Reynolds’ rhetorical and literary approach reveals how this ambivalence goes beyond mere contradiction or paradox, and functions rather as a kind of performative feature. Due to the ambivalent rhetoric, the Quranic audience can never be sure of Allah's innermost intentions. “The key to piety is uncertainty” writes Reynolds, because “Muslims should hope for Paradise and fear hell but be certain of neither” (p. 121). In the traditional jargon of Biblical theologies, this uncertainty can be said to constitute Die Mitte, the centre, of the Quran.

The ninth subchapter, on “God of the Bible and the Qur'an”, marks a comparative turning point. In it, Reynolds demonstrates that the paradoxical and ambivalent God of the Quran, including some features that are less appealing today, very much resembles the complex character of God in the Bible. In exemplary manner, Reynolds thereby demonstrates that the Bible and the Quran, including their believers, constitute tangled threads that matter as much today as in the past.