Is God’s scripture alone enough to provide sufficient guidance to believers? The general answer across the Abrahamic faiths has been ‘no’, however the tendency to eschew the intermediation of religious scholars and clergy and focus solely on scripture has been represented by various religious movements throughout history. They have emerged at different times and in […]
Qur’an translations tend to be categorized in various different ways, but one of the most common means of categorization relates to perceptions of the translator and the style of the translation. Accordingly, Qur’an translations can be put into several categories, such as academic or confessional, humanistic or ‘fundamentalist’, poetic or non-poetic, or ‘traditional’ or ‘modernist’.
In celebration of the one-year anniversary of ‘Qur’an Translation of the Week’, the GloQur team today jointly looks at modern translations of a contested verse. We will discuss Q 5:51, a verse that pertains to the relations between Muslims, on the one hand, and Christians and Jews, on the other hand. How is it rendered in
This week we turn our attention to Koran: Perevod Smysla Ayatov i ih Kratkoe Tolkovanie (‘The Qur’an: A Translation of the Meaning of its Verses, Accompanied by Concise Interpretation’), a Russian Qur’an translation by a Tatar translator known by the teknonymic name Abu Adel. First published in 2008, it is already on its fourth edition.
This week’s thread focuses on a Shiite foray into Qur’an translation into the Russian language. While the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Russia are Sunnis, there is also a sizeable number of Shiite Muslim communities scattered across the Russian Federation. These communities are mostly made up of ethnic Azerbaijanis and Lezgins and are scattered in
While it might seem that translating the Qur’an from one European language into another is an archaic process that has been widely replaced today by the work of Arabic-speaking specialists who engage with the original Arabic, occasionally translating the translation can still be an end in itself. This is precisely the case with the Russian
This week our attention focuses on the translation made by one of the most charismatic Muslim preachers in contemporary Russia, Shamil Alyautdinov (b. 1974). An Imam in Moscow, he holds various titles in the Muslim Spiritual Administration of the European Part of Russia (DAMER). Alyautdinov is author of more than thirty books and, quite uniquely
The most recent translation of the Qur’an into Russian, produced by the Kazan Muftiyat in 2019, can tell us much about Muslim theological polemics in contemporary Russia. Widely discussed on social media, the Kalam Sharif translation claims to be the only Sunni “orthodox” translation of Qur’anic meanings corresponding to Maturidi/Ashari theology. As well as the
To mark the arrival of a certain president-elect (!), this week’s post concerns another “muntakhab” – a project to standardise Qur’an translation according to the scholarship of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University. “Al-Muntakhab fi tafsir al-Qur’an” is better translated as ‘The Select Interpretation of the Qur’an’. This thread draws numerous points from Stefan Wild’s paper on “Muslim
Qur’an translation of the week #26: Al-Montakhab Read More »
What should the criteria be for someone aiming to translate the Qur’an? The debates around these issues surrounded the Qur’anic translation of Dr. Magomed-Nuri Osmanov (1924-2015), a Dagestani philologist and specialist in Oriental languages. Osmanov’s work represents a continuation of the Russian academic tradition of making Muslim scripture accessible for the vast Russian-speaking audience. Despite
Qur’an translation of the week #24: Translations by Magomed-Nuri Osmanov Read More »
