The Exceptional Qurʾān: Flexible and Exceptive Rhetoric in Islam's Holy Book is a synchronic, theoretical study of the Qurʾānic complex of exception and flexibility. Through analyses of rhetorical devices, including direct exceptions, recurring standardized arguments with a dispensatory aim, and modifying hypotheticals within the Qurʾān's legal discourse, the author argues that this complex seems to be - if not entirely unique - articulated in a new and deliberate manner as compared to previous scriptures: The Qurʾān continuously negotiates a balance between strictness and leniency, between principle and dispensation. Joining its philological results with the system theoretical framework of anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport, The Exceptional Qurʾān considers how such rhetorical strategies contributed to the systemic long-term durability of the Qurʾān, becoming the successful founding document of a religious community and discursive tradition.
