Muhammad Shahrour (April 11, 1938 - December 21, 2019); A Syrian engineer, researcher and thinker, one of the civil engineering professors at the University of Damascus, and author and theorist of what has been called the “contemporary reading of the Qur’an.” Shahrour began writing about the Qur'an and Islam after returning from Moscow, and some accused him of embracing Marxist thought because of his youth in the Soviet Union. In the year 1990, he published The Book and the Qur’an, in which he tried to apply some new linguistic methods in an attempt to find a new interpretation of the Qur’an. Muhammad Shahrour gained many supporters and opponents of his ideas in many countries.