The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Islam. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Series Edited by Jack Miles
(p. 15). It certainly does that, and more, and should be recommended for all those interested in early Qur'anic manuscripts. YASIN DUTTON University of Cape Town DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2016.0227 The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Islam. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Series Edited by Jack Miles. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. 659 + xxx. £24.99. ISBN 9780393918984. The study of Islam in the post-secondary academy in North America and Europe is seeking new directions in the wake of international politics, diversity of scholarship on Islam, and a changing mix of student body. These transformations and contingencies have made the issues related to the teaching of Islam, particularly its introduction to undergraduates, a central concern both for instructors and theorists of religion. The drive towards a post-Orientalist and cosmopolitan view of studying Islam has led to a rethinking of Islamic Studies as a field of inquiry, as contributors to Ernst and Martin's Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism have argued.1 It is in this context that Jane Dammen McAuliffe's anthology of `Islamic' texts (along with the lengthy, but essential, general introduction by the series editor, Jack Miles) is a new effort towards developing a more sophisticated pedagogical tool that has significant theoretical repercussions for the field. Whereas earlier similar collections have been modest in their aims, the editors of The Norton Anthology have set out, in general, on an ambitious path. The work emerges from the series editor's `desire that international world religions should be allowed to speak to you in their own words rather than only through the words of others about them' (p. xvii). In addition, the work undertakes a formidable project of developing a canon of readings to understand a particular religion. Setting the Norton anthologies project in the context of the...