"But here, in the Conference of the Books, the debates still rage on and the dynamic discovery ends only to begin again.

In the small crowded apartment outside Princeton, New Jersey, the Islamic Civilization, the Qur'anic Civilization, still stands, reproducing itself every night. Has a single text ever played such a pivotal role in any world civilization? Has there ever been a civilization based on a text, a single text, before this one? Weren't we the civilization of the Reading? But how did a civilization founded on reading forget the art of reading? Why is it that the people of the Book came to disdain books? My God, You said that they forgot God, so You caused them to forget themselves. Is this how we came to forget You? Is this how we came to forget the art of reading?

-Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, Conference of the Books: The Search for Beauty in Islam, p. 20