In Ecumenical Community, Hamza M. Zafer explores the language and politics of community-formation in the Qurʾan. Zafer proposes that ecumenism, or the inclusivity of social difference, was a key alliance-building strategy in the western Arabian proto-Muslim communitarian movement (1st/7th century). The Proto-Muslims imagined that their pietistic community--the ummah--transcended but did not efface prior social differences based...