Competing Monotheisms

I describe my approach to the Qur'an as 'contextualist', by which I mean that the Qur'an, to the extent that it is a tangible object, cannot be treated in isolation from knowledge of the time and place in which it came into existence. Nor can we pretend to be able to view the Qur'an as if fourteen centuries of history have not since taken place. Next week I will have some remarks to make about our contemporary appreciation of the Qur'an, but for now I want to elaborate on a comment that I make in several places throughout my book, that Islam emerged within a context of competing monotheisms.
When I talk about competition I do not mean that representatives of different monotheistic groups were doing their best to acquire the maximum market share of available souls. What I do mean is that the presentation of ideas associated with the One God to the people of early seventh century Arabia would, in virtue of historical circumstance, be compared and contrasted with what those people already had been exposed to, whether formally or informally, with respect to the Jewish and Christian responses to that God.
Even though I do not state the matter this way in my book, my continual reference to the context of religious competition is meant to be a reminder that one of the important questions to be answered about the content and structure of the Qur'an is: Why is so much of the Qur'an devoted to discussing the Jews?