On Tuesday, July 31, fourteen members of the book club met to discuss What the Qur’an Meant: And Why it Matters by Garry Wills. This text seeks to clarify the Qur’an’s message on several topics, such as sharia and jihad, commonly distorted by modern audiences for political purposes. He casts religious ignorance about Islam (these days conflated with patriotism in many parts of the U.S.) in a dangerous light, linked to the consequences of the Iraq War and other American efforts in the Middle East. We agreed that his strongest lines of argumentation centered around the parallelism and continuity between the Covenants and prophets/ main figures of the three monotheistic faiths, as depicted in the Qur’an. Weaker were sections on women in the Qur’an, though enlightening in the relative freedom afforded women in terms of holding property and initiating divorce, rights not enjoyed by contemporary Christian counterparts at the outset of Islam. We discussed the value of the text to arm us with proper definitions and translations in wider conversation with peers, even if ultimately Wills’ writing style bordered at times on unnecessarily colloquial, glib, and abrupt.