| Between a Scholar and a Hard Place Cambridge University Press gave serious consideration to publishing Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice before expressing their regrets. The Senior Commissioning Editor, Religious Studies explained that they expected to publish their own “Companion to the Qur’an” which “will look at many of the issues that you raise” and that “the [Cambridge University] Press does not as a rule publish books for the broad general readership you envisage, and I think your book would be better placed with a trade publisher.” Yes, a trade publisher is a wonderful excuse... eh suggestion! If only it was that easy. A British trade publisher described the predicament they face in making a book like Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice available to the general public this way: Reads well, but shops would be very reluctant to stock something on this subject that isn't by a scholar or authority of some kind or other. If you could get some good endorsements… So there you have at it. A Layman’s Guide to the Koran is stuck in a no-man’s-land between the scholarly press, who will only consider authors who have the proper pedigree, and the trade publisher who is understandably reluctant to publish a book on a controversial subject that does not have the blessing of accredited experts. I have read more books on Islam, the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad than I care to count. My library shelves are buckling under the strain of so numerous weighty, scholarly opinions. So many books by so many experts that promise to explain, to the lay person, what Allah tells us are “elaborately formulated and clearly expounded [instructions] from the Wise, the All-Aware” (11:1) then fail to deliver — the reason for Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice. Thomas Paine expressed in plain, clear, forthright prose what was at stake. The world needs a book like Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice just like the American Revolution needed Thomas Paine's Common Sense, perhaps more! The Complete Layman’s Guide to the Koran is a nine years undertaking that has the potential, if it reaches a large enough audience, of starting a real dialogue on the challenges posed by the Koran to our way of life, if not our right to life itself. If you have the means to reach that critical mass of readers, consider obtaining the publishing rights. Bernard Payeur
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