The present volume offers the first scholarly discussion of Günter Lüling's (1928-2014) work.
Lüling's views long passages of the Qur'an are originally mere reworking of pre-Islamic
Christian hymns have not received the scholarly attention they deserve since they were
published at the beginning of the 70s of the previous century. Lüling attempted to reconstruct
an Ur-Qur'an in order to show that Islam emerged in a Christian context in Mecca. He also
believed that Muhammad converted from Trinitarian Christianity to paganism and that the Kaaba
was a church. Lüling's hermeneutical approach to the Qur'an and other Arabic sources on early
Islam is for the first time the subject of the studies included in the present book. In
addition the volume offers interesting insights in the law case which accompanied the
publication of Lüling's work.
