Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam.

• Author: Pessagno, J. Meric

This well-produced volume is based on the Gifford Lectures given by Professor Schimmel at Edinburgh in the Spring of 1992, with the addition of calligraphy by Dr. Shams Anwari-Alhoseyni of Cologne. It offers the discerning reader the sweep of information that one has come to associate with the work of the author.

Apart from the introduction, the volume has seven studies on deciphering Allah's ayat in both the general and particular meaning of that word. These discuss, in turn, the sacred aspects of nature and culture, sacred space and time, sacred action, the word and the script, individual and society, God and His creation, and eschatology. The book closes with a section on how to approach Islam.

As one would expect in a work by Schimmel, the examples drawn are largely those derived from popular practice, particularly Moroccan, Persian, Indian, and Turkish, and from Sufi interpretations and Sufi poetry. As she herself notes in the introduction: "the personal bias of the researcher cannot but be reflected in the study - a bias which, in my case, certainly leans more to the mystical and poetical trends inside Islam than towards its logical legalistic aspect, which, in any case, is not the topic dealt with here (although it would be most welcome to interpret the refined Islamic system and its applications in a comprehensive comparative work)." This "bias" is seen most strongly in the first three chapters, where the numerous examples drawn from Professor Schimmel's vast erudition and extensive personal travels beautifully illuminate such natural phenomena as light and water, plants, animals (cat lovers will be particularly pleased by the remarks on pp. 23-24) - a most interesting discussion of what she terms Islamic iconoclasm. The discussion of sacred space and time offers a range of ideas on these topics in an Islamic context.

The scholarly substance of the book does not consist in staking out new ground. Indeed, the materials, as such, are the standard and necessary stuff of any serious discussion of Islam. Rather, its scholarly value is the presentation of an intelligent, sympathetic, and, despite her expressed doubt, objective appreciation of the Islamic experience of the Divine.

This work should be read with the parameters set by the author herself, viz., her collaboration with Friedrich Heiler who, she says, "opened the world of the history of religions to me." She refers particularly to his major study Einscheinungsformen und Wesen der...