Qur’an translation of the week

Qur’an translation of the week #100: ‘The Qur’an: English Translation, Commentary and Parallel Arabic Text’ by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and Prof. Farida Khanam

by Afsan Yusuf Redwan, Islam UK Centre, Cardiff University Can there ever be such a thing as a ‘spiritual translation’ of religious scripture? If so, then how would this be modelled to appeal to audiences? How would a ‘spiritual translation’ help proclaim the message of Islam, in essence, doing da’wah (‘proclaiming’)? Furthermore, is there a …

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Qur’an translation of the week #99: The State-sponsored Translation of the Qur’an into Palembang, Religious Moderation, and Language Dilemma

by Tri Handayani, Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Al Qur’an (STIQ) Al-Lathifiyyah Palembang The Indonesian state has only recently, in 2018, initiated an official project to translate the Qur’an into local languages, even though the first state-authorised translation of the Qur’an into Indonesian was published in 1965 and has since been reissued in various different editions. However, …

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Qur’an translation of the week #98: Ibn Kathīr’s commentary as a source for a Qur’an translation into Bosnian

Since 1990, a large number of Arabic religious texts have been translated into Bosnian. When it comes to exegetical texts specifically, the appearance of a shortened version of Ibn Kathīr’s commentary in Bosnian in the mid-1990s was quite significant, and can be considered a mark of the rise of Salafism in the country which was, …

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Qur’an translation of the week #97: Tafsīr-i Uthmānī – ‘Restoring’ an old translation

What do you do when the language of a Qur’an translation becomes outdated, but you still want readers to benefit from the work? One answer is provided by Maḥmūd Ḥasan’s Urdu Qur’an translation, which was later included in the Tafsīr-i Uthmānī. Maḥmūd Ḥasan (d. 1920), who became later known as ‘Shaykh al-Hind’, was born in …

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Qur’an translation of the week #96: Bosnian “Časni Kur’an” by Mustafa Mlivo

Mustafa Mlivo (born 1955) is a writer on Islamic topics from Bugojno, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He graduated in engineering from Džemal Bijedić University in Mostar and has published several books on Islam and Science (for example, ‘Kur’an ispred nauke i civilizacije’ [2001, Medžlis Islamske zajednice Bugojno], which has been translated into English under the …

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Qur’an translation of the week #95: The New Order, the Armed Forces and the Republic of Indonesia- Bakri Syahid’s Javanese Qur’an translation Al-Huda

Qur’an translation as propaganda: war alliances and nation-building (3/3) On the cover of Al-Huda, a Javanese Qur’an translation first published in 1979, the author, Bakri Syahid (1918–1994), is presented as both a retired brigadier general and a former rector of the State Islamic Institute Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta. As this description shows, army and state …

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Qur’an translation of the week #94: “In the darkest hours of night Thou flashest the light”- Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade’s “The Gouran Versified” and Muslims in British Cyprus

Qur’an translation as propaganda: war alliances and nation-building (2/3) In the period between the two world wars, Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade (1897–1964), a Muslim in Cyprus, an oft-forgotten corner of the British Empire, started translating the Qur’an into English verse in order to gain British support for Muslim Cypriot interests. His translations of segments of the …

Qur’an translation of the week #94: “In the darkest hours of night Thou flashest the light”- Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade’s “The Gouran Versified” and Muslims in British Cyprus Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #93: The Qur’an as a weapon in the Great War – Mahmud Mukhtar Pasha and the German-Ottoman alliance

Qur’an translation as propaganda: war alliances and nation-building (1/3) When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in November 1914 on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, pro-Ottoman circles in Germany were eager to sell this new alliance to a German-speaking public that was under the influence of decades of discourses on Oriental despotism …

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Qur’an translation of the week #92: Interpreting the Qur’an into Ukrainian from a translator’s perspective

In contrast to most previous threads, this week’s post shares a translator’s vision of his own work, in this case ‘Preslavnyi Koran: Pereklad smysliv Ukrains’koju movoju’ (‘The Glorious Qur’an: A Translation of its Meanings into Ukrainian’), first published in 2013 by the King Fahd Qur’an Printing Complex. Unlike many of the other translations recently published …

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Qur’an translation of the week #91: Abdullah Yusuf Ali and His Afterlives

The translator in this week’s post is very much a household name for readers of the Qur’an in English, but what are the roots of that popularity? And who is the man behind the name: Abdullah Yusuf Ali? It is commonly stated that Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s “The Holy Qur’an” has been printed more than any …

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