Contemporary Approaches to the Qur’an and Sunnah: By Mahmoud Ayoub (ed.) Herndon, VA: IIIT, 2012. 230 pages.

Institute for Scholars organized by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), one of the publishers of this journal. This annual gathering, which was inaugurated in 2008, is “dedicated to the study of contemporary approaches to Qur’an and Sunnah,” hence the name of this volume. Given the capacious title, the work naturally offers essays – ten to be precise – from a wide range of disciplines, including Qur’anic and hadith studies as well Islamic law, theology, history, and comparative religion. Being the first iteration of this series, it is perhaps somewhat unsurprising that the work’s overall quality is somewhat under par, with individual essays varying considerably in quality. It is therefore reassuring to see on IIIT’s website that subsequent Summer Institutes have been given a more focused theme.