Taha stood between mystical Islam and the tradition of modernity, and as a result was publicly executed for apostasy in 1985, in part for his interpretations of the Qur'an and his radical theory of Islamic prayer. Mahmoud (religion, Tufts U.) not only describes Taha's two worlds and their collision in his theory but also his radical conception of equality at the political, social and economic levels and his modernist positions on art, science and law. He describes Taha's Sudanese contexts and the reforming movements in which he participated, his theory of individual prayer, his hermeneutics of semantic fluidity within the Qur'an, and his commentary on determinism, free will, divine punishment, evolution, art, and the shift from the first to the second message of Islam. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)