Picking a Translation

The first thing you notice when sitting down to read "the" Quran is the same thing you notice when sitting down to read "the" Bible: there's no such thing, at least for those of us not sufficiently versed in ancient languages to crack open the original.  I expected to have to choose a translation, but I didn't expect to have 57* translations** to choose from.

When I was on the mission field, it was a common complaint that despite the dozens--hundreds--of translations of the Bible into English, we were wasting resources adding more and more and more when so many languages didn't even have one translation.  These days I'm more inclined to suggest that if not one of a hundred extant translations lives up to your expectations, then perhaps the problem lies with your expectations.  Perfection is a heavy burden for a text to bear.

Still, I want to give this thing a fair shake, not stumble into the Islamic equivalent of The Message.  I called up the local mosque and was directed to The Noble Quran***, a Saudi-backed translation billed as the most widely disseminated.  It's also been slammed as the most extremist, interpolating the text with parenthetical additions consisting of medieval screeds and polemics on modern Middle Eastern politics.  In the very first Surah we find denigration of "those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews)", whose crooked ways are contrasted with the straight ones that we should be following.

Well if I wanted to hear about a people being under God's wrath by virtue of birth, I'd go read Luther.  This is the most widely disseminated version?  The go-to answer for the first Mosque on google that picked up the phone?  Yikes.

Understand, I'm not saying this is any worse for Islam than the "kill the gays" bits of the Bible are for Christians.  But I'm sort of used to the Christian Bible saying kill the gays, and I'm not really used to anyone who's trying for respectability just out and ranting about The Jews in public.  This is part of the problem with Western perception of Islam.  Christianity's sins--textual and practical--have become the wallpaper, whereas the casual Western observer of Islam can find much that, in its newness, still shocks.  This is not an argument for the normalization of Islam, though--it's a call to bring the hammer down on Christianity.  If the gays came out with a book that said to kill the Christians, you'd better believe they'd be taken to task for it, and rightly so--but no such accounting is demanded of those that cleave to the Bible.

At any rate I'll do one better for Islamic PR than it just did for itself and avoid that particular text.

I find myself drawn to the descriptions of two versions: The Holy Qu'ran by Muhammed 'Ali, the favored text of the Nation of Islam, and copiously footnoted, whose anti-miraculism might prove something of a counter-measure to normal dialectic of "The fact that we now know what it says is wrong isn't sufficient grounds to claim that's not what it means."  The other, alleged to be accurate, beautiful, and free of prejudice, is Arberry's The Koran Interpreted.  Both texts are available for free online at the links that I've provided.

I plan, at least at first, to read the text in both translations, and at the very least skim the footnotes, before recording my reactions.  We'll see how it goes.  The whole endeavor is very much a work in progress, so please bear with.

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*Counting (and perhaps miscounting) only direct-to-English translations.

**I'm also aware of the Islamic tradition that no true translation of the Quran is actually possible.  This is correct, but trivial--I'm a former professional translator, and I can safely report that no "true" translation of anything is possible.  All translations are paraphrase--though some are more paraphrase than others--and they all make tradeoffs between rhythm, poetry, connotation, references, double-meanings, idiom, readability, and grammatical construction.  Even reading in the original, the translation from the page to the mind is problematic: no two people will come away with exactly the same impressions of a text's "true" meaning.  That said, the text consists of words, and those words have meanings, and anyone who insists otherwise is selling something.

***Text available here.

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Reading the Quran, Intro

A nonbeliever was once traveling through Northern Ireland back when the Northern Irelanders were slaughtering each other for being the wrong sort of follower of the Prince of Peace.  He was stopped at a roadblock by unknown assailants: "Are you Protestant or Catholic?" came the menacing question.

"I'm an atheist," he replied.

Undeterred, the questioner demanded: "Well are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?"

I never really believed in Vishnu.  I didn't agonize for years about reconciling Vishnu with what I could observe to be true.  I wasn't mind-fucked by Vishnu's followers and indoctrination.  I don't feel an urgent need for atonement through opposition to the sins of Vishnu's tribe, as I was never a participant.  Of course Vishnu isn't real, and of course bad things are bad things whether it's Hindus or Christians or atheists doing them.  But Vishnu isn't near to my heart in that Morgul-blade sort of way that Southern Baptist Jesus still is.  I am very much a Protestant atheist.

That personal history informs my encounters with other faiths.  When all you have is a rage-fired hate-crossbow, every problem looks like a zombie, and while I never really expect to like what I see when I look at religion, the itchy trigger finger can make an honest examination difficult.  Here we have the indoctrination of children,  the unsupported truth claims, and the harmful and antiquated morality propped up by the arrogated word of the divine; there we see the social circles so beloved of its members and so oblivious and sickeningly hurtful to those excluded; and finally we are reminded of the good commandments, and asked not to notice that they are supported by the same epistemology which upholds the bad.

How shall we react?



But the attempt should nonetheless be made.  So, I'm going to read the Quran.  It's an idea that's been rattling around in my head for a while now: to have an honest encounter--including an honest accounting for my history and viewpoint, which you're currently reading--with the "sacred" texts, and to set down my thoughts and reactions.  I've just recently started a new job, so I have no idea what kind of posting schedule I'll be able to manage, but I'll strive for regularity and at least weekly updates.

So with all that out of the way, stay tuned for more.

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