Quran (Koran) Translations

The first Quran was translated in the year 1142, and it was commissioned by the European Kings to Paint Islam as a bad religion, and they frightened their subjects that Muhammad was going to slaughter the people of Europe if they don't stand up against the advancing Arab armies.  The work was carried out by the French Abbey for a fee.  They coined word the word "Mohammedan" religion for Islam.

It is a big story I would like to tell, as it is easier than writing it out. Please read the full story with many videos and write-ups at www.QuraanConference.com.

Quran is a book of guidance in building cohesive societies where no human has to live in fear or apprehension of the other; it is as simple as that.  I usually refer to at least 5 different translations to get the essence of a single verse, and of course, our formula to understand the Quran is to read three verses before and three verses after a given verse to understand the context and meaning behind the verse.

However, every faith including yours has a % of people who do things that go against the very teaching of the faith they claim to espouse. That is an insignificant number and less than 1/10th of 1% of any group.

Over the years, I have collected about 20 different translations for reference.  A few are in this picture.  I have also visited the Library of Congress and checked Jefferson's copy of Quran translation by George Sale. 

You may like this article in Dallas Morning News;

In defense of Islam, pursuing a civil dialogue

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100919-In-defense-of-Islam-pursuing-9397.ece

By Steve Blow, sblow@dallasnews.com Published 19 September 2010 02:28 AM

Over and over you hear it said: If Muslims oppose terrorism, why don't they stand up and say it?

If that has been you, Mike Ghouse ought to be your hero.

It is hard to imagine that anyone has worked harder than the Carrollton resident to demonstrate the peaceful and moderate side of Islam.

And that effort includes personally visiting Dallas' First Baptist Church last Sunday just to put a friendly face on the "evil, evil religion" that the Rev. Robert Jeffress denounced a few weeks before.

"It was wonderful," Ghouse said of the visit. "We were so warmly received."

He hopes a quick chat with Jeffress will be the start of a deeper discussion about Islam and the importance of respect between religions.

"I want to have a dialogue with him, not to say he is wrong but to share another point of view," Ghouse said.

The 57-year-old Muslim was born in India and has lived in the United States for 30 years. He owns a small property management firm. But most of his day is devoted to building bridges between people of different faiths.

"It is my passion," he said in his distinctive raspy voice.

He has been a guest a dozen times on Sean Hannity's TV and radio talk shows. "I don't like the way Sean cuts me off, but I have to honor him for giving the American public a semblance of another point of view."

Ghouse said he can understand fear and criticism of Islam because he went through a time of similar feelings. As a teen, he was troubled by passages of the Quran. He called himself an atheist for a while.

But he said deeper study led him to realize the Quran had been purposely mistranslated down through history.

In the Middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders.

Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews.

"It was all for politics," he said.

Ghouse said he hopes to present Jeffress with a modern, faithful translation and challenge him to find evil verses.

"If he can, I will convert. I will join his church," Ghouse said. "If he can't, I will call on him to retract his statements and become a peacemaker."

Ghouse acknowledges that deep problems persist within Islam. "Three steps forward, two steps back," he said with a sigh.

And he agrees that mainstream Muslims have not done enough to counter violent images of their faith.

"That is very true," he said. "But part of it is that many Muslims have given up hope that we will ever be heard."

He said repeated denunciations of terrorism seem to fall on deaf ears.

And some efforts have backfired – like the proposed Islamic information center in New York. He said it should be hailed for furthering the moderate Muslim cause.

Instead, it has deepened hostility toward Muslims.

I have been astounded by the amount of anti-Islam propaganda that circulates via e-mail. Tons of it has come my way in the last few weeks.

One theme is that people like Mike Ghouse can't be trusted, that Islam encourages deception.

But Ghouse says actions speak louder than words. And he points to elections in Muslim nations.

More than half of Muslims live in countries with some degree of democracy. And time and time again, Islamist parties are overwhelmingly rejected in favor of secular, mainstream parties.

"The religious parties don't get more than 3 percent of the vote," Ghouse said.

Polls show deep mistrust of Muslims. "But the most important question in those surveys is: ‘Do you know anything about Islam?' " Ghouse said. "Most people say no."

What keeps him going is faith in Americans, he said.

"The majority of Americans, if they know the truth, they will change their minds."

# # #
www.MuslimSpeaker.com

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, writer, thinker, futurist and an activist of Pluralism, Islam, India and Civil Societies passionately offering pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.

Quran - a new American Translation by Nasr

Quran - A new American Translation | www.WorldMuslimCongress.com

Indeed there are nearly 300 English translations in the market now, and each one reflects the experiences of the translator, as it should. Each translation slightly differs from the other, fulfilling what Prophet Muhammad wanted, to paraphrase him, " I am leaving this book for you to read and understand." The emphasis was “YOU,” Mind you, he did not assign an interpreter to refer to, and instead he expected each one will use his personal reference to understand the book while maintaining the central theme – building cohesive societies– Islam is also called the religion of human nature. 

Mike Ghouse

www.MuslimSpeaker.com 
# # # 

Courtesy - The Daily Beast

The American Quran Pissing Off the Saudis
The Study Quran puts this great religious work in historical perspective.

A new translation of the Quran, with commentary, is causing a stir—and maybe something of a revolution—in the world of English-speaking Muslims.

Why’s that? Because Salafists—adherents of a very conservative brand of Islam—have dominated the world market for Qurans for decades.

Funded by the oil-rich royal family in Saudi Arabia, which has an especially rigid Wahhabi branch of Islam, the Salafis have exported their teachers, their mosques, their audio and video productions, and religious texts across the Arab world and into Pakistan, Europe, and North America, quashing alternate interpretations that don’t fit their narrow views.

“In all these places, they funded the building of Saudi-style mosques with Wahhabi preachers and established madrasas that provided free education for the poor, with, of course, a Wahhabi curriculum,” religious scholar Karen Armstrong wrote about the Saudi export of religion in 2014. “At the same time, young men from the poorer Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan, who had felt compelled to find work in the Gulf to support their families, associated their relative affluence with Wahhabism and brought this faith back home with them, living in new neighborhoods with Saudi mosques and shopping malls that segregated the sexes.”

Seeing this new translation as a challenge to their orthodoxy in English-speaking countries, Salafis are none too pleased. In online discussions and reviews, influential Salafis are panning the volume, called The Study Quran,  as a soft-bellied facsimile that might be fine for academia, but not fit for following.

In fact, this no mere academic debate. Followers of the Saudi-Wahhabi-Salafi version of Islam in Europe and the United States are increasingly seen by law enforcement as a pool from which radical jihadis can draw recruits.

Some strains of this Salafi interpretation have popularized takfirism—the practice by which some Muslims declare that others are not true believers. The aftereffects are clear in fringe jihadi groups like the self-declared caliphate that calls itself the Islamic State, where those who believe differently are deemed apostates who can be, and are, slaughtered en masse. The vast majority of Salafis are not jihadis and not takfiris. But those who are use their understanding of their Quran to justify killing Shia Muslims, Yazidis, adulterers, gays, and anyone else who runs afoul of their zealotry.

Generations of the world’s Muslims have, now, grown up in the shadow of this Saudi religious empire, ignoring previous centuries of rigorous religious discourse, debate, and dissent.

The Study Quran, setting the record straight, may come as something of a revelation to Muslims and anyone else interested in Islam who speaks English. It is a formidable academic endeavor, and since it was published in November it has been flying off the shelves in a massive hardback edition. (It is also available now on Kindle.
The  editors have compiled a new translation, new commentary, and drawn on dozens of the most prominentmufassirs (interpreters or exegetes), many of whom have never before been accessible to an English-speaking audience. Indeed, “very few” of the sources cited in The Study Quran are available in English translation, head editor Seyyed Hossein Nasr told The Daily Beast.One soon comes across nuances that are unmentioned or ignored by extremists. The Study Quran notes, for instance, that verse 47:4—used by ISIS to justify beheadings—focuses on “the brevity of the act, as it is confined to battle and not a continuous command.” This interpretation would seem to challenge extremists who attempt to carry out such acts on civilians, whether on the streets of London or in Syria.

The Salafi scholars who have monopolized English-language Muslim resources are disturbed and even frightened by this textual revolution that puts them back in their place.

Salafism “was not in the mainstream of the Muslim tradition,” said Nasr. “It rejected centuries of Islamic thought.” The scholars contributing to The Study Quran, who are both Sunni and Shia, also break with the ultra-Orthodox animus against Shiism.

The Study Quran’s rich commentary, crowding around a few verses on any given onion-paper page of the hardback edition, seeks to remedy the previous absence of solid historical discourse. After all, Nasr said, even centuries ago the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca meant that exegetes, or interpreters of holy texts, were able to have a much richer exchange of ideas—and much more knowledge of one another—than European thinkers of the time.

It’s no surprise then, that Abu Eesa Niamatullah—a British Salafi with a large social media presence—cautioned followers tempted by The Study Quran to “avoid it. Like the plague.”

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“It doesn't just have mistakes, it's actually dangerous,” Niamatullah said. “This is advice to the 99 percent of people here, those who don't have the detailed tools necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Though Sunni Islam formally lacks a clerical class, Niamatullah expressed concern that those who lack proper religious or academic training might be swayed from the orthodox path by the new edition. 

“My point being that I see it as absolutely a threat to orthodox Sunni creed that such translations and commentaries, but more importantly, such deviated individuals such as Nasr being given a prominent platform to the hearts and minds of the basic masses who can't filter through the nonsense like you can,” he added in a comment.

A more moderate review, recommended by prominent cleric Yasir Qadhi to hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, acknowledges that the rigor of The Study Quran“is apparent after even a cursory reading,” but nonetheless it “is an academic and educational work, and as such includes commentaries from sources that may not be considered orthodox depending on one’s denominational orientation.” (Qadhi recentlydistanced himself from the Salafi label and critiqued some aspects of the movement.)

“Some of the Sufi commentaries can come off as uncomfortably esoteric,” the author Mobeen Vaid writes. “Khārijite positions are occasionally expounded upon, and not for the purpose of refutation.” (Kharijites were a rebel sect in the first century of of Islam.)

The differences that make it suitable for academia but not practice go all the way down to the understanding of the very nature of the Quran. “For believers,” says Vaid. “the Quran doesn't say anything, God does.”

And yet, The Study Quran fills part of what some scholars see as a perpetual hole in the study of Islam. Quranic translations abound, but centuries of commentary, debate, and context have long been the exclusive domain of those with a strong command of Arabic.

"We appear to be amidst a deluge of English translations of the Quran," Scott Lucas, a professor at the University of Arizona, wrote in 2014, reflecting on the proliferation of translations in the prior decade.

Amazon

‘The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary’ by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Author), Caner Karacay Dagli (Author), Maria Massi Dakake (Author), Joseph E.B. Lumbard (Author), Mohammed Rustom (Author). 2048 p. HarperOne. $37.27

Pretty much any Quran given out in a da’wa, or religious outreach, program almost anywhere in the world has its roots in Saudi Arabia. Most of them use a translation completed by Yusuf Ali, an Indian-born, British-educated scholar who died in the mid-20th century. Published in 1938, it included not only Ali’s translation, but also parenthetical commentary on meaning—much of which has been stripped out by its Salafi adapters.

The first Quran ever owned by this reporter was an Ali translation, distributed through a Chelsea-based da’wa program to a bank teller, who unloaded it to this student of religion when she was still a teen. The thick hardcover has the scripture in two varieties: the original Arabic, as well as an English translation.

(Significantly, The Study Quran, already voluminous, does not include the original Arabic, the language in which Allah delivered his message to Muhammad. But the Arabic text is now readily available online and in many smaller volumes for comparison.)

Ali wasn’t the first translator of the Quran into English, of course. One of the earliest widely available translations was by George Sale, and it served as the standard for nearly two centuries. It’s rife with annotations that point to Sale’s Christian understanding of the “Mohammedan’s” holy scripture. More recent translations have come from feminists and creative translations that assign each Arabic word one—and only one—English equivalent.

And The Study Quran surely won’t be the last. The authors’ main goal, after all, is not a definitive translation—but a demonstration that different interpretations were “established, well known, and rigorously discussed over the centuries,” Nasr said.

This article has been updated.

Quran Translation by Safi Kaskas

Quran Translation by Safi Kaskas | www.QuraanToday.com 

I welcome this new translation of Quran by Safi Kaskas and David Hungerford among the multitudes of translations. Indeed there are nearly 300 English translations in the market now, and each one reflects the experiences of the translator, as it should.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) understood human nature, and believed in freedom, an inalienable rights of individuals.  He has repeatedly said, there is no compulsion in religion and that you cannot push any one to believe against his or her will.  Thus, in his last sermon, he said (paraphrase), ‘I am leaving this book to you to read and understand it, hang on to it, and you cannot go wrong with it.’

Mind you, he did not assign the interpretation of the book (Quran) to anyone. He did not say, ‘look, from here on if you have questions about the book, check with So and So Shaikh.’ He know each person will read and understand through his own prism and that is why Islam is also called a Deen of fitra (human nature). I would say don't judge Islam, Christianity or any faith by the actions of the individuals, religion stands on its own - a pristine system to create peaceful societies,  most people get that right and a few don't. 

Quran cannot be more clearer than this, it repeats endlessly that no one is responsible for your actions but you, and it is your responsibility to get the book right before you act. Police will give you a ticket if you violate the traffic rules, your claim that you did not know does not release you from the mistake you made.

Quran is a book of guidance to find peace within and peace with others, if you don’t get that right, go back and read it. God cannot be wrong; it is your understanding that is wrong. By the way no one owns God, he, she or it is not any one's property either.

There is a simple test to determine the authenticity of the translation (or your understanding of it); and that is, God is not a villain of his own creation. Quran respects all creation, and respects all traditions and calls for accountability, justice and mercy to build a cohesive society where no one has to live in fear of the other.

The second test is based on the individual, the more an individual interacts with people of different faiths, the greater the understanding of Islam he or she would have, indeed Prophet Muhammad grew up in such an environment and he was pluralistic to the core like Jesus and all the great spiritual masters of the world. He respected the otherness of of the others and it is summarized in this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Tyt7raIXM

Religion is not about arrogant claims that you have a superior product. Arrogance creates conflicts with others right off the bat.  No matter what religion it is, it teaches humility that builds bridges and harmony between different people. 

Take a look at Safi’s translation, it's available at Amazon, “The Qur’an with references to the Bible” by Safi Kaskas and David Hungerford. You owe it to yourselves to find the truth.

Safi is an interfaith activist and he clearly grasps the essence of Quran, that is to create cohesive societies. He passes in both the tests I have mentioned earlier. I have promised him to read his translation write a review, and I shall soon do that, after I complete my book, "the Mistakes Muslims have made".

Video Interview of Safi Kaskas - https://youtu.be/HLuAvLKNjlw

Mike Ghouse
www.QuraanToday.com
www.QuraanConference.com
www.WorldMuslimCongress.com
www.MuslimSpeaker.com

www.InterfaithSpeaker.com

The Qur'an: A New Translation by Tarif Khalidi

The Qur'an: A New Translation

By Tarif Khalidi

530pp, Penguin Classics, £25 

 We look for two things in any new translation of the Qur'an. How close does it get to communicating the meaning of the original, that inimitable oral text, the very sounds of which move men and women to tears and ecstasy? And does it offer something more: a new perspective, perhaps; or an innovative rendering?

    Tarif Khalidi, a professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut, scores high on both these criteria. He manages to capture the allusiveness of the text, as well as something of its tone and texture. While being faithful to the original, he succeeds in conveying linguistic shifts, from narrative to mnemonic, sermons to parables. And there is an innovative component: it is the first translation that tries to capture both the rhythms and the structure of the Qur'an.

    The best way to demonstrate its newness, and how close it is to the original text, is to compare it with an old translation. The translation I have in mind is Khalidi's predecessor in the Penguin Classics: The Koran, translated with notes by NJ Dawood. First published in 1956, Dawood's translation has been republished in numerous editions. It has been a great source of discomfort for Muslims, who see in it deliberate distortions that give the Qur'an violent and sexist overtones. It is the one most non-Muslims cite when they tell me with great conviction what the Qur'an says.

    The change can be detected with the name of the sacred text itself: we move from "Koran", the older anglicised form, to the new "Qur'an", which is now accepted as the correct Arabic transliteration and pronunciation of the word. This is not just a trivial matter of linguistics; it signals a shift from the old Orientalist way of presenting the Qur'an in English to a new inclusive way that takes Muslims' appreciation of their sacred text into account.

    Subtle differences in chapter headings signal significant change. The opening chapter of the Qur'an in Dawood is "The Exordium". In Khalidi, and indeed universally among other translations, it is "The Opening". Dawood translates Az-Zumar (chapter 39) as "The Hordes", suggesting bands of barbarian mobs; Khalidi renders it as "The Groups".

    While Dawood's translation presents the Qur'an as a patriarchal, sexist text, Khalidi brings out the gender-neutral language of the original. A good example is provided by 2:21. In Dawood we read: "Men, serve your Lord." In Khalidi, it becomes: "O People! Worship your Lord." Dawood's translation of the famous verse 2:25, frequently quoted, is largely responsible for the current misconception that Muslim paradise is full of "virgins" - despite the fact that the Qur'an explicitly denies any carnal pleasures in paradise. This is because we find "men" in Dawood's translation in the garden of paradise who are "wedded to chaste virgins". Khalidi renders it correctly: "In these gardens they have immaculate spouses."

    The old Penguin translation uses rather obscurantist images throughout to give the impression that the Qur'an is full of demons and witches. For example, in 31:1, Dawood has God swearing "by those who cast out demons". Khalidi translates the same verse as: "Behold the revelations of the Wise Book."

    So this translation is a quantum leap ahead of the old Penguin version. But it also has a rather special character. Khalidi is not interested in providing the context of the verses of the Qur'an. We therefore do not always know who the Qur'an is addressing at various junctures or who is speaking to whom in its internal dialogues. Here M Abdel-Haleem' s translation (OUP, £7.99), published in 2004, is more useful. Neither is Khalidi all that concerned with providing the reader with help. Footnotes, for example, would have been useful for occasional explanation of what is happening in a particular passage. Instead, he takes a rather unusual attitude to the Qur'an. It is "a bearer of diverse interpretation" , he says; and its ambiguities are deliberately designed to stimulate thinking. Let the reader be "patient of interpretation" and read at will. All that is needed is to approach the text with sympathy.

    Khalidi wants the reader to enjoy the experience of reading the Qur'an. Of course, he wants to communicate the majesty of its language, the beauty of its style, and the "eternal present tense" of its grammar. But he also wants the reader to appreciate the Qur'an's unique structure, how the language changes with the subject matter, how it swirls around and makes rhythmic connections. He wishes to show how each of the seven tropes of the Qur'an (command, prohibition, glad tidings, warnings, sermons, parables and narratives) registers a change in the style of its language. A lofty ambition, but one he pulls off with some success.

    The shifts in style are presented in two ways. Linguistically, Khalidi moves from literal translation, rendered in clear prose, via the use of heightened language to deeply poetic renderings. Physically, the layout of the passage changes, so each style looks different on the page. The narrative passages, or sections dealing with social and legislative affairs, appear in a prose format. The dramatic and metaphysical sections are arranged in poetic style.

    This translation manages to give a glimpse of the grandeur of the original. Khalidi's poetic sections will be compared with AJ Arberry's The Koran Interpreted (OUP, 1964), widely considered to be the most poetic of all translations. While I still prefer Arberry, Khalidi compares very favourably.

    But, for the life of me, I cannot see why poetic translations cannot number the verses consistently and consecutively. Like Arberry, Khalidi provides verse numbers on the side margins non-consecutively. There are a couple of other unforgivable omissions. In the main text, the chapters have no numbers. While there is a short glossary, there is no index. I found the translation very difficult to navigate.

    These omissions notwithstanding, this is a magnificent achievement. And Penguin, which had a rotten image among Muslims thanks to Dawood's translation, has redeemed itself.

Saturday June 21, 2008, The Guardian, London

Buy The Qur'an: A New Translation at the Guardian bookshop

Ziauddin Sardar blogs on a different verse or theme of the Qur'an weekly at blogs.guardian. co.uk/quran

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/books-and-documents/the-qur-an--a-new-translation---the-eternal-present-tense/d/195

Boycotting Quran application on i-phone

URL - http://quraan-today.blogspot.com/2012/10/boycotting-quran-application-on-i-phone.html

An email has been forwarded a few times from respected Imam Zafar Anjum and other Muslim groups like Frisco Masjid and Irving Muslims. I am posting this at www.WorldMuslimCongress.com, www.Quraantoday.com and to the World MuslimCongress@yahoogroups.com, and other Muslim groups of Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh where it could hurt fellow Muslims. 

There are 25 Quraan translations on the market today, most of them are alright, a few of them are great and two of them are ugly. One was written in 1042 AD and is the foundation for Islamophobia, and the other one was translated by a Muslim Hilali Khan in 1920’s.

The hate and Islamophobia we see today emanated from this translation with 60 deliberate mistranslations, causing ill-will towards Jews and Christians. The Hilali Khan translation has projected God (Muslim God?) as hateful towards Christians and Jews. Thank God, much of this is corrected since 2011 - but millions of copies are out there promoting hatred. By engaging with the right wingers like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and others, I have learned the sources of their false premises. It is this translation. Full story and a whole lot of links at www.QuraanConference.com

The merciful God does hates his creation nor Prophet Muhammad hates the universe. Indeed Prophet is the mercy to mankind (Q 21:107) and God is Lord of the Universe (1:2). We need to believe in this rather than uttering it without meaning it. 

There was another translation by evangelist that got distributed in Kuwait after the desert storm, and thank God, it got stopped immediately.

And now there is a claim about another translation by Ahmadiyya Muslims that has been urged to boycott.

We are Muslims, and not Mozzies, the African Americans are African Americans and not the “N’,  the Ahmadiyya Muslims are Ahmadiyya and not Qadianis.  What did Allah and Prophet say about this?  I am sure each one of us can Quote a lot of Quraan and Hadith without meaning it. It is time we believe in what we quote. 

I urge Imam Zafar Anjum and all others involved in passing the following note, to be specific as to where it is wrong, otherwise we become part of the propaganda machine. Before declaring it is wrong, how does it stack up with 25 other translations? If it is not wrong, why pick on it? Let people read multiple versions of translations, at least it makes them think, the true Iqra will take place with that.
If Maulvi She Ali's translation is wrong, we have a solution; we can ask the Ahmadiyya Muslims to correct it. Insha Allah, I will undertake that mission. Let not our prejudice cause us to be unjust, isn't that what God says?

This is the note in circulation:

APP IMAGE

Important Warning! 

            As-Salamu 'Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatu

  

A new version of the Quran has been released on the Apple APP STORE by the ahmadiyyah/qadiani community.

The name of the app is "The Holy Quran, Arabic text and English translation". "Translated by Maulvi Sher Ali, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community" has been clearly mentioned in the app information in iPhone App Store.|

Please make Muslims aware not to buy/download this app!

Boycott this product as the contents of this application are incorrect/misleading & contradict the teachings of the Holy Quran and Hadith.

Please forward this to everyone so they are made aware even to those without androids or iPhones so they can inform others insha-Allah

Jazak Allah Khair

Mike Ghouse