Drawing upon his own experience under apartheid in South Africa, Esack exposes the ways in which traditional interpretations were marshalled in support of his country`s oppressive racial segregation even as those same texts were used to support a campaign for justice across South Africa. Arguing forcefully and quite personally against what he views as an exclusivist yet non-essential tradition in Islam, Farid Esack makes the case for the Qur`an as a text of liberation.