The Study Quran: a new translation and commentarySEYYED HOSSEIN NASR, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF(HARPER COLLINS, 2,048 PP, £40)Tablet bookshop price £36 • Tel 01420 592974 A fixation on the letter of Scripture is not the sole preserve of the “fundamentalist”; it also afflicts Westerners anxious to grasp the “essence” of a religion without too much hard grind. Non-Muslims sometimes fondly imagine that reading the Qur’an from cover to cover will tell them all they need to know about Islam. It won’t. “Islam” encompasses a great deal more than its sacred book; what the curious outsider might glean from its pages matters rather less than how Muslims themselves have learned to understand and apply it. Till now, no obvious resource has been