The present study presents a comprehensive insight into actual trends in academia in Arabic literature and Islamic studies. In this respect, the contributions pay tribute to Wim Raven, an outstanding scholar of early Arabic literature and the formative period of Islam and someone who always had new and surprising twists and turns in his research and scholarly productions. The same holds true with the papers presented here. Robert Hoyland presents us with his reasoning about the origin of the term "aʻjami language" in the Qur'an. Was this really a "non-Arab" tongue as later tradition would have it, or would it be better to classify it as a "North-Arabian" dialect? Anna Akasoy deals with "chick lit" in the Hijaz and the modern image of Aisha as Muslim role Model.