RQR | Review of Qur'anic Research

RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org Review of Qur’anic Research, vol. 5, no. 4 (2019) Abdur Raheem KIDWAI God’s Word, Man’s Interpretations: A Critical Study of the 21st Century Translations of the Quran New Delhi: Viva Books, 2018. Pp. xvii + 178. Paperback Rs 695. ISBN 978-9387486294 Colleagues and fellow scholars of Islam, how many times have you been asked about the best English translations of the Qurʾān and how many times have you mumbled in response something along the lines of “Arberry is good, there is Yusuf Ali, Abdel Haleem’s is more recent I guess”? Abdur Raheem Kidwai’s God’s Word, Man’s Interpretations is the book to read for a better, more learned answer concerning the English translations of the Qurʾān that have appeared since 2000. Kidwai’s admirable effort in this book can truly spare the scholars of Islam the time of sifting through the ever-growing numbers of recent translations—that is, if one can look past his unflinching policing on behalf of the Sunni-Jamāʿī interpretations of the Qurʾān and his unapologetic disdain for every other approach to the Qurʾān including what he calls “the Orientalist enterprise” (142). RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org Kidwai’s book is organized as short book reviews (from 2 to 6–7 pages, except in the case of one 11-page outlier) evaluating thirty-two English Qurʾān translations published between 2000 and 2017. In addition, the book has a short preface and an appendix titled “Tafsir Studies: An Assessment of the Orientalist Enterprise,” both written by the author, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of studies on Qurʾān translation prepared by Sajid Shaffi. The back cover of the book has a brief blurb about Kidwai, which states that the author has two Ph.D. degrees in English, one from the University of Leicester and the other from the Aligarh Muslim University, the latter being the place where he currently teaches. As a professor of English and the director of a center for Qurʾānic Studies at the Aligarh Muslim University who has published comprehensive works on the matter, including Bibliography of the English Translations of the Qurʾan 1649–2002 (2008) and Translating the Untranslatable—A Critical Guide to 60 English Translations of Qurʾan (2011), Kidwai seems to have the essential credentials for writing about Qurʾān translations in English. The book under review should be considered, therefore, as an update to his earlier works. Kidwai lays out some of his criteria for evaluating the Qurʾān translations in the preface of the book; others can be gleaned from his comments on particular works. He frankly acknowledges in the preface that part of the impetus for writing both this book and previous ones is to provide a quality control filter for unsuspecting readers, especially Muslims, who may unwittingly read a “tendentious translation” composed by “an Orientalist or a sectarian zealot” and “fill their heart and mind with what the Qur’an does not intend at all” (xi). He notes the increase in the number of Qurʾān translations written by Muslims in recent years but he is quick to stress that the Muslim name of a translator is not a guarantee for the quality of RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org the work nor for his endorsement of the translation. A case in point is his harsh treatment of a translation by two Ahmadi authors, Amatul Rahman Omar and Abdul Mannan Omar.1 What, then, makes a Qurʾān translation satisfactory in Kidwai’s opinion? Even though he never states this explicitly in the preface or elsewhere in the book, Kidwai appears to look for in a translation faithfulness to what he calls the “mainstream Islamic stance” (mentioned in page 23 and again in page 91), “in accordance with the beliefs of Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jamah [sic]” (91). Accordingly, any translation of the Qurʾān that is “dismissive of the divine origin of the Quran, the Prophet’s integrity, the authenticity of the Quranic text and the sound credentials of the Prophet’s Companions, Hadith and all things Islamic” (xv) receives unfavorable reviews from Kidwai regardless of the translator’s professed identity as a Muslim. Kidwai finds many recent translations of the Qurʾān lacking in this respect. He criticizes ʿAli Quli Qara’i for his “Shīʿa stance” (16), Edip Yuksel and Ijaz Chaudry for submitting to Rashad Khalifa’s Nineteeners school,2 Kader Abdolah for his rejection of the Qurʾān’s divine origin, the previously mentioned Omars for their Ahmadi interpretations, Tahirul Mohammad Qadri for his stress on saint veneration and extreme reverence for the Prophet, and Laleh Bakhtiar for her feminist readings of certain verses (particularly Q Nisāʾ 4:34). Of the three non-Muslim authors whose work he reviewed in this book, Alan Jones and A. J. Droge bear the brunt of his “Orientalist” censure as they “resurrect almost all the Medieval misconceptions and misperceptions about Islam and the Quran” and “seek to discredit the text of the Quran, dismiss its contents as a poor replica of the Judaeo-Christian material and reject the Quran as a ‘problematic and obscure work’” (xiv). Thomas Cleary’s translation, on the other hand, is 1 Kidwai refers to Ahmadis throughout the book as “Qadyanis,” after the name of the town where their leader Ghulam Ahmad was born. I will avoid using this term as it is considered pejorative by the Ahmadis themselves. 2 Followers of Rashad Khalifa (1935–1990), an Egyptian-American biochemist and Qurʾān dilettante, believe that number 19 is the secret code of the Qurʾān and the foundation of its mathematical miracle. RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org commended for approaching the Qurʾān on its own terms and “introducing Islam and the Quran as Muslims believe” (5). Amid all the scathing criticism that Kidwai reserves for many recent Qurʾān translations, what is really commendable, however, is that he does not use translators’ backgrounds as props for ad hominem vitriol. Rather, he gives specific examples as to how the different perspectives of the translators surface in their interpretations and how these interpretations fare in view of the principles of what he believes to be the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of Sunni Islam. As a second criterion, Kidwai asserts that a Qurʾān translation should help readers “advance their understanding of the Quran’s meaning and message,” a phrase that he uses no fewer than eight times in slightly different wordings (4, 34, 49, 53, 115, 124, 137, and 141). What he seems to mean by this is that it is incumbent upon the translator to make readers appreciate the Qurʾān’s “life-giving and spiritually invigorating message” (121, but also 129). Since, however, the Qurʾān is full of “terms, concepts, personalities, geo-historical allusions, and juristic rulings” (53), for him a translation should have a reader-friendly introduction and explanatory notes. Kidwai bashes many translators—including Muhammad Mahmud Ghali, Muhammad Sharif Chaudhary and Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley—for not providing any parenthetical or independent notes, or for not having enough of them. Some translators are criticized for not steering clear of isrāʾīliyyāt in their explanatory notes (Assad Busool, Kader Abdolah, Mustafa Khattab) and others, such as M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, for “inane observations” in their notes (12). It is rather contradictory, I must say, that while Kidwai takes issue with translators who describe certain verses of the Qurʾān as obscure or vague (xiv, 29, and 106), he nonetheless demands that they pepper their translations with comprehensive notes so as to clear up any ambiguity. He is right, however, in his disapproval of translations that leave RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org certain Arabic terms, such as taqwā or zakāt, untranslated without offering a glossary of such terms (118). Still in the spirit of bringing out the Qurʾān’s life-enriching message, Kidwai reserves special praise for translations that address contemporary issues that the Muslim world faces and those that dispel prejudices concerning the Qurʾān in particular and Islam in general. His appreciation for Wahiduddin Khan’s translation of jihād as “peaceful ideological struggle” (59) or for Tahirul Muhammad Qadri’s interpretation of fasād fī’l-arḍ as “terrorism and massacre amongst Muslims” (80) gives away Kidwai’s predilection for translations that mine the Qurʾān for messages of relevance to the contemporary world. Yet he insists that such readings into the qurʾānic text be executed cautiously in order not to make the Qurʾān subservient to fashionable trends and ideologies. For example, he criticizes Laleh Bakhtiar and Assad Nimer Busool for translating the phrase wa-ḍribūhunna (“and strike them [disobedient wives]”) in Q 4:34 as “go away from them” and “make love to them” respectively. For Kidwai, such interpretations are desperate attempts for apologetics by “heretic, feminist translators” (72). He is equally displeased by interpretations of certain verses in the Qurʾān as prognostications of scientific discoveries. A very useful feature of Kidwai’s evaluations is his discussion of each translation’s language and readability. As a professor of English he is alert to unidiomatic usages, obsolete expressions, and infelicitous performance of style, grammar, and syntax. He fittingly comments in his review of Assad Nimer Busool’s translation that “a translator must enjoy command over the target language” in order not to put off the reader regardless of his or her mastery of Qurʾānic Arabic (71). It is a testimony to Kidwai’s diligent scholarship that he can cite copious examples of inelegant English for nearly all of the thirty-two translations he RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org reviews in this book.

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