Minhaj ِAl-Fiqh At-Tarjamī of The Meanings of Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm

And At-Turjumān Al-Faqīh (I)

 

Doaa M Deep

Praise be to Allah U, and Ṣalat wa-Salām be upon An-Nabi r, the mercy to all creatures, and upon all his family and Ṣaḥaba t. Actually, this article refers to my recent Ph.D study dedicated to every one searching for the truth; Muslim or non-Muslim, ‘Arab, or non-‘Arab, to realise the holistic miraculous message of Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm, and its language al-‘Arabbiya, the chosen language for a chosen Book. The study is dedicated to the free people of Gaza/Palestine, and to all humanbeings who are struggelling to defend their creed, land, and freedom.

Muḥammad Rasūl Allah r is the greatest person that left a lasting impression in the history of mankind.  He spoke the truth and guided us by delivering the true message of Islam through his Sunnah, by sayings and deeds, the second Waḥi (Revelation) after Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm, without which, Muslims would have lost the compass. Rasūl Allah r said, “This ‘Ilm (knowledge) will be carried by the trustworthy of every successive generation, refuting the corruption of extremists, the distortions of falsifiers, and false ta’wīl (interpretations of) the ignorant.” (Narrated by Al-Bayhaqī). Debts are also for al-‘Ulamā’, Sheikhs and scholars who collected al-‘ulūm al-Islamiyya (Islamic fields of knowledge), and kept this treasure for all humanity, following the order of An-Nabi r and his Ṣaḥaba t.

Al-Minhaj (the methodology) of the Tarjama (translation) of the Meanings of of Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm (TMQK) shall be unique. Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm is not a book of science, despite its scientific miracles, nor is it a book of philosophy despite its great Ḥikma (wisdom), nor a book of history despite the many historical facts it contains, nor a book of poetry or literature despite its miraculous linguistic unique bayan (eloquence). Tarjamet the meanings of Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm (TMQK) is one of the thorny issues, which needs to be fully theorised from an Islamic perspective, beyond the biased non-Islamic, especially Western, control of the discipline. Al-Minhaj is a call on the Muslim ‘ulamā’ (scholars) and Islamic authorities to produce a contemporary Ijmā’ (consensus) that guarantees a reliable Islamic tanḍhīr (theorisation of TMQK). This ijma’ is crucial and needed following the importance of tadwīn Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm and Al-Ḥadīth. It is a call to establish a global centre of al-‘ulūm al-Islamiyya considering TMQK as one of these ulūm that cannot be classified under what are known as the humanitarian sciences. The criteria of al-Minhaj and a reliable turjumān (translator) of TMQK are derived from the rules and criteria that An-Nabi r had set for TMQK during his call to non-‘Arab rulers and their people to Islam. Those rules were later adopted and developed by aṣ-Ṣaḥaba (the Companions), at-Tabi’īn (the Successors), and the first Muslim ‘ulamā’, where Maṣadir al-Islam were the moderators.

Attributing non-islamic terms to Islamic concepts cause talbīs (misconception), which can be observed in the various suspect applications and printed copies of Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm. For example, the Qur’ānic concept of history (tarīkh) requires believers to walk the earth, meditate, and draw lessons by looking at history as a record of events in their chronological sequence and not the events themselves, knowing the justifications and explanations behind events (Qasim, 1984, pp. 24-26). The ancient Muslim historians provided some interpretations of history that formed the general doctrines of historical writing, as ad-Dourī states, which argued that human history, including at-Tarīkh al-Islamī, is an expression of the divine Will in the succession of ar-Resalāt (Messages), the last of which is Islam; such as aṭ-Ṭabarī’s (d. 310 AH) works (Ad-Dourī, et al., pp. 11-29).

Others believe that at-Tarīkh al-Islamī is an expression of the role of al-‘Arab who carried the message of Islam, while others interpreted it in light of the moral factor, and there were those who saw in it an expression of the activities of the nation with its sects and classes, including ascetics, scholars, and writers, etc., in addition to the social civilizational interpretation, such as Ibn Khaldūn’s (Ad-Dourī, et al., pp. 11-29). At-Tarīkh al-Islamī is a comprehensive and multi-dimensional discipline which contains all aspects of lives and achievements of the Muslims, even the history of ‘Arabia before An-Nabi Muḥammad [r], the development of Muslim society under An-Nabi [r], the imams and the society under various dynasties up to the present century, including: Dīwān al-‘Arab (the pre-Islamic poetry), Ayyam (the days of) al-‘Arab (tales of battle days of tribes), Ṭabaqat (Group Relating History), Sīrah Literature (Biographies), Ḥouwaliyāt (Chronicles), Khabar (Historical Anecdotes), and ‘Ilm al-Ansāb (Genealogy).

Western Approaches of Translation, a Tool to Claim Flaws in Al- Qur’ān Al-Karīm

Historically, the Crusades were the starting point of theorisation of TMQK, whose effects have continued till its adoption by modern deviated movements and groups such as al-Aḥmadiyya, Nukraniyyūn (i.e, falsely named the Qur’ānists); or other attempts that try to play a middle role to solve the clash between Islamic thought and materialistic concepts, such as Islamic Humanism, Islamic Feminism, Islamic Communism, or any other approaches that rely upon Western ideas and theories.

A reading of Tarīkh (history of) TMQK helps lay the groundwork for new engagements in tanḍhīr for at-Tarjamāt a-Islamiyya in general. These types of approaches are instructive in examining the previous TMQK and perceiving the futuristic projects in the field. This reading offers an analysis of transitional periods within different traditions, and reveals how different non-Arabic speaking Muslims’ engagement with Al-QK changed over time, according to their methodological approaches.

Brett Wilson (2019) refers to the countless efforts towards rendering Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm into “the vernacular languages used by Muslim communities” as an integral part of Protestant missionaries parallel to their biblical translation work in African and Asian languages, intended to reveal “the flaws and inconsistencies” of Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm and to demonstrate the superiority of the Christian scriptures (p. 552 & pp. 557-558). On the other hand, Ḥassan Ma’ayerjī (2023) raises some questions behind the Europeans’ insistence on translating Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm over eight centuries. In 1867, at the Christian Missionary Conference Cardinal Ch.M. Lavigerie said,

Our message is to integrate the Berbers into our civilization, which was the civilization of their fathers. An end to the residence of these Berbers should be put in their Qur’an. France must give them the Bible. Or send them to the arid desert, far from the civilized world. (qtd in Saady, 2014)

The Western Christian ideology domination of the spreading TMQK over all colonized territories has been pre-planned, since the first Latin translation (the language of the Church). Christian theorisation has based on the concept that there are many similarities between Islam and Christianity, as if Islam is nothing but a distorted image deviated of Christianity to be purified. This required sending missions for many years to study al-‘Arabiyya, then a long retreat to translation under the guidance of the highest Christian religious authority at that time; the Cluny Abbey, considering the differences as mistakes in Al-QK, and raising shubuhāt (misconceptions) which were more important to them than translation (Ma’ayerjī, 2023). Under the influence of the concept that a Muslim is close to Christianity, Pope Pius II dared to send a letter to Sulṭan Muḥammad II inviting him to convert to Christianity in order to become the caliph of the emperors of Byzantium (Ma’ayerjī, 2023).

Ma’ayerjī (2023) classifies Christian translations of MQK into several stages:

A– The period 1100-1250 AD which witnessed an increasing interest in the study of Islam among monks and scholars, with Latin translation of MQK.

B– During 1250-1400 AD, the decline and setback of the Crusades began, which prompted the Church to increase the tone of hostility to Islam.

C- From 1400-1500 AD, the roots of the incitement subsided for a while, then it flared up again in 1453, the year of the conquest of Constantinople, which reopened the wounds and awakened the Crusader’s hatred again.

The seed of Orientalism started with the translation by Robert of Ketton (Robertus Ketenensis) Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete (The law of Mahomet the false prophet, 1143 which was the first complete Latin TMQK, out of curiosity triggered by panic from the Islamic conquest of Andalusia, as part of the “Corpus Toletanum,” a collection of writings about and against Islam initiated by Peter the Venerable, as “a tool for aiding the conversion of Muslims to Christianity” (historyofinformation.com, para. 1).

Marcus of Toledo’s translation into Latin might have been used by André du Ryer as a source for his French translation, L’Alcoran de Mahomet 1647 (Bobzin, 1995, p. 59). The Alcoran of Mohamet by Alexander Rose in 1649, the first English translation of MQK, built mainly on the French translation is the ugliest and obscene example of what Orientalism and missionary books wrote; as Rose warned that al-Qur’ān is a dangerous book (Islamweb, 30^th Dec 2018).

As for The Koran by George Sale, the most circulated and accepted English translation among the people of the West, is unreliable. In the introduction, Sale attacks Islam and what he calls “the calamities brought on so many nations by the conquests of the Arabians,” and claims that the name of An-Nabi r “formed them to empire” as “loaded” with “all the detestation” (Sale, The Koran). Sale, who had learned ‘Arabic in his spare time and had never visited a Muslim country, “mainly used volumes in his own library, including a recent Latin translation of the Qur’ān “designed for the use of Catholic missionaries” (Bevilacqua, 2014). The first European translation that transcended the polemical concerns of the religious wars and their attendant mistranslations, did not rely on cooperation with native ‘Arabic speakers, and was completed in the Vatican by an Italian in Latin, published in print together with the ‘Arabic original in 1698 (Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, 2006, p. 345 & Henning, 2014).

Biased Sceptic Western Control of TMQK

In the 19^th century, attempts started to imitate what had been applied to the Biblical studies into the Qur’ānic studies under slogans of liberating them from the taqlīd (tradition); while in fact, those attempts were just mimical to Western approaches that cannot match the nature of Al-QK and the Islamic studies. Pinpointing when TMQK did precisely develop as a separate genre has not been exact. Orientalists and Western Christian missionaries’ scholarship had a great impact in establishing new models for Qur’ānic “translation,” proclaimed to be “defying the conventional taboo, and, gradually, modern-style renderings, which could be read independently from the ‘Arabic original,” came into more accessible widespread use,” however, “with polemic nature, which when added to the spread of nationalism urged Muslim authors to rectify the image of Islam and Qur’ān by composing “tarjama” of their own (Wilson, 2019, p. 558).

Before the 1960s, in Europe, most of TMQK were done “by non-Muslims and the titles were also non-Muslim … [a]nd in many cases the Muslim reader saw these translations and especially their comments on the text as extremely unfair and biased” (Wild, 2010a, 20:31-24:05). Johann Lange’s translation (1688) relied on the French translation by Andre de Reyer in 1647. Even later translations, such as of David Nerter (1703) and Theodore Arnold (1746) did not depend on the ‘Arabic text, but rather on the Latin translation of Ludovico Maraccio (1698) or on the English translation, respectively (Islamweb, 17th Apr 2018).

Moreover, the rise of non-‘ulamā’ intellectuals in the print-based public sphere brought new Islamic voices that challenged the authority of al-‘ulamā’ and made TMQK a key part of Muslim reformists’ agendas. For example, in the late Ottoman Empire, a generation of intellectuals read Le Coran French translations by Albert Biberstein-Kazimirski, due to the absence of a similar text in Turkish, while other regarded Muḥammad ‘Alī’s English translation (1917), which combined an ‘Arabic-English interlinear layout with footnotes, as a model for contemporary Turkish translations (Wilson, 2019, p. 559).

In the modern era of liberalism and abstract scientific view of the subject of translation, many Muslims’ participations in TMQK have produced hundreds of complete translations to European languages, other than hundreds of partial translations (Ma’ayerjī, 2023). In South Asia, the missionary influence was more direct than in Turkey by the printing of the first Urdū translations at the Hindustani Press by the British Orientalist John Wilkins 1802, while the American Presbyterian Mission sponsored an Urdu translation in 1844 (Wilson, 2019, p. 559). In Sub-Saḥaran Africa and China, the missionary groups played a pivotal role in sparking conversations over the need for Muslim translations of the holy book (Wilson, 2019, p. 559). This lead important Islamic institutions and ‘ulamā’ begin to produce and distribute tarjama of MQK on a large scale (Wilson, 2019, p. 558).

In some translations; such as Swaḥilī, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Malay, the ‘Arabic text of al-Qur’ān was omitted, creating freestanding modern genre of Qur’anic translation (B. Wilson 2014). Most 20^th-century works included the ‘Arabic text, and “the interlinear format of premodern works was readopted in many languages” (Wilson, 2019, p. 559).

Christian missions into the Muslim world during the 18^th and 19^th centuries flourished European lexicography and oriental studies, and “played an important role in carving out a space for considering renderings of the Qur’an an entity of their own” (Wilson, 2019, p. 553). A literature was produced to attack Islam, such as Martin Luther who called it the “Turkish religion” (Felber, 2012, p. 259).

Abraham Geiger’s What did Moḥammed Absorb from Judaism? (1833) was “deeply ingrained into Western Qurʾan scholarship,” and is claimed to represent “the starting point of modern historical research on the Qurʾan in general” as a source for the life and thought of An-Nabi r (Sinai, et al, 2010, pp. 3-6).

New Orientalism, “a Naked Discourse of Power”

Since al-‘Abbassy time, translation from Latin philosophy did not only affect the thought of the Muslim ‘Ulama’, but this effect has continued till recent times over huge number of Islamic studies and schools of thought. There has been a Western insistence on applying models that cannot be applicable to the studies of Al-QK, and “[t]he exclusive focus on non-Arabic sources that is arguably a constant temptation for Western students of the Qurʾan thus turns out to be dangerously lopsided” (Sinai, et al., 2010, P.19).

Of the early attempts of Oriental studies that accompanied the Christian missionaries of Al-QK was Samuel Zwemer (1867-1952), known as ‘Apostle to Islam,’ the founder of “effective Muslim evangelism,” the founder of the Cairo-based missionary journal The Moslem World (Wilson, 2019, p. 552), who saw Islam as a challenge, and had a crucial influence on the Qur’ānic studies on Christians as well as on some Muslims. He warned the church of “the lingering danger” of what he called “fundamentalist Islam” by contesting the divine origins of Islam; Al-Qur’ān Al-Karīm as having earlier rabbinic Judaism, heretical Christian sources, and questioning an-Nibuwwa (the Prophecy) of An-Nabi r (Bekele, 2012). There is a link of the calls of Zwemer and Christian missionaries with groups appeared later under the guise of “reason;” such as “revisionist” and “modernist” Muslims who argued that Al-QK with its more “contextual nature” needed “a more flexible” interpretation to make some of its teachings more “compatible with modern realities and norms, urging Muslims to “stop blindly following traditional rulings” (Saeed, et al., 2021).

The debates over TMQK have lasted for centuries, especially in the first half of the 20^th century during Turkey’s Turkification movement, as well as when Egypt’s Al-Azhar burnt the translation of the meanings of Al-QK by al-Aḥmadiyyah group. Islamic intellectualism continued systematic attempts to reinterpret Al-QK following the Western secular models of democracy, gender freedom, etc., with the aim is to “re-read the Qur’an in the light of modern textual and philosophical disciplines, such as literary criticism, epistemology, hermeneutics, structuralism and post-structuralism…” with ambition “to adapt forms of literary criticism and Biblical experience to the case of the Qur’an” (Gökkır, 2005, p. 62).

The Second World War “did mark a noticeable change” in approach of intertextual readings of the Qurʾan in the light of the religious traditions, where the person of An-Nabi Muḥammad r became “the primary focal point of interest,” with the efforts of European Orientalists towards founding and modifying his picture, such as Wansbrough’s deconstruction of the historicity of An-Nabi r (Sinai, et al, 2010, p. 6), and Christoph Luxenberg’s Syro-Aramaic reading of Al-QK,which  “either mistrust or completely reject the Arabic accounts concerning the early Islamic period” (Schoeler, 2010, p. 779). Also, Tāḥā Ḥussain followed David Margoliouth in his rejection of the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry (Sinai, et al., p.3). Goldziher’s spread criticism of al-Aḥadīth an-Nabawiyya (the Prophetic traditions) was developed further by Joseph Schacht who criticises the transmission of As-Sunnah (Schoeler, 2010, p. 779). Luxenberg’s Syro-Aramaic reading of al-Qurʾān was of the hypotheses that tried to show that Ayāt Al-QK “were broken down into a multitude of pagan, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian, Mandean, Manichean, and other sources” (Wild, 2010, p. 632-3). Etymology was a focus by Theodor Noldeke to show what he claimed as “arbitrarily used and misunderstood loanwords in the Qurʾan,” (Wild, 2010, p. 632-3).

Since 9th/11, there has been unprecedented rise in the attention given to the Qurʾan in Western media that shapes Islam with terrorism. Many Orientalists attack as-Sīrah an-Nabawiyya claiming that the miracle of An-Nabi Muḥammad r was a “private miracle” of “receiving the Qurʾan from an angel” (De Blois, 2010, p. 619).

1-5-5 Examples of Previous TMQK

The Koran translation by J. M. Rodwell (1861) contains obscene words about An-Nabi r and his Ṣaḥaba (the Companions) t, and a descending order of Al-QK, which he claims is taken from books and ṣuḥuf (manuscripts) of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians (Islamweb, 30th Dec 2018). He intentionally distorts the meanings of al-Ayat. For example, he translates the second Aya of Al-Kawthar “فصلِّ لربك وانحر” as “Pray therefore the Lord and slay the Victims” (Islamweb, 30th Dec 2018). In addition, Y. H. Palmer’s translation (1880) contains many mistakes. For example, he translates “ربك” as (Their Lord) (Islamweb, 30th Dec 2018). Richard Bell’s TMQK, subtitled: Translated with a Critical Rearrangement of the Suras (1916), attempted “to restructure” Al-QK in accordance with a fairly arbitrary Bellian chronology that changed it into an almost “unrecognizable hodge podge text of disjointed verses” (Wild, 2010, pp. 625-647). Gunter Luling “saw in the Qurʾanic text a composite structure of two radically different elements” or “layers of texts;” one with a “one-dimensional” ‘Arabic Islamic wording and another older one superimposed on a number of originally Christian pre-Islamic texts, or stanzas or hymns, recited in ‘Arabic that had been “revised and altered to fit the later Islamic dogma” (Wild, 2010, pp. 625-647).

The Koran Interpreted (1955), by A.J. Arbery, the famous orientalist, is devoid of the language of hatred of the Orientalists and missionaries towards Islam, with a beautiful introduction and classical English. However, it was mistaken in many places as a result of the translator’s lack of knowledge of al-Fuṣḥa (Islamweb, 30^th Dec 2018). N.G. Dawood’s translation The Koran (1956) is full of errors that indicate his hatred for Islam and Muslims, claiming that An-Nabi r wrote Al-QK, benefiting from the books of the Jews and Christians (Islamweb, 30^th Dec 2018).

Since the first translation into German in 1616, there have been many TMQK into German, “most of which are considered below standard by today’s standards” (Ḥaidar, 2018). Max Henning’s Der Koran (1901), one of the most widely-sold Qur’ān translations in the German market targeting “lay readers” and “beginner students;” German-speaking non-Muslims, was “retranslated into some Eastern European languages and republished in revised German versions that all claim to represent his original work (Pink, 2021, para. 2). This is a common occurrence, especially with translations whose copyright has expired or whose authors have chosen not to enforce it (Pink, 2021, para. 2). Despite claims of fidelity to the original text, there are often significant differences between the original and the republished editions that reflect their various editors’ agendas (Pink, 2021, para. 2). In his introduction, Henning expresses his apprehension about the future of Islam, and fills the footnotes with Israelites (Islamweb, 17^th Apr 2018).

Until around two decades ago, only the translations of non-Muslims were available to the German Muslim, then, many versions of translations by Muslims have become available; such as Murad Hoffman’s revision of Henning’s translation (Islamweb, 17^th Apr 2018). The Lebanese Catholic priest, Adel Theodore Khoury included 60 pages of anthologies of al-Aḥadīth, an act that is not acceptable among Muslims, for fear of mixing the words of Allah Y with other words. The German orientalist Rudolf Bart worked on issuing a scientific translation of Al-QK with an interpretation, which is hardly readable due to the large number of additions and explanations in brackets instead of footnotes (Islamweb, 17^th Apr 2018).

1-5-6 Translations by Deviated Groups

The Holy Qur’an translation by Muḥammad ‘Alī (1917) includes notes of the beliefs of the Qadiyanis, which contradict some of the basic Islamic beliefs; such as: sealing Nubuwwah of Muḥammad r and parting the sea for Musa r (Islamweb, 17^th Apr 2018). Henning’s translation left great influences on a number of subsequent translations, especially on al-Aḥmadiyya translation (1939). Then it was published by Mirza Naṣīr Aḥmad in 1945 which is good in terms of the linguistic level, but it is not acceptable due to its sectarian comments, and his order of Surahs. The Holy Qur’an with English Translation and Commentary (1947): the translator is not known, but it was issued by Mirza Bashīr ad-Dīn Maḥmoud Aḥmad, the head of al-Aḥmadiyya Organization. The Holy Qur’an: English Translation and Commentary by Malek Ghulam Fareed (1969), a translation of the Urdu translation of Al-QK by the head of the Qadiyanis, that presents the Aḥmadiyya view as the core idea of Al-Al-QK. The Running Commentary of the Holy Qur’an by Khadim Raman Nurī (1974) supports Muḥammad ‘Alī’s translation, but it does not distort the concept of Al-QK like it. It is a very literal translation; that does not explain- in most cases- what is meant by the Qur’anic text.

Al-Aḥmadiyya has had a suspicious role in the field of TMQK, that has caused much talbīs (misconception). In 1974, the Regional Assembly of the Northern Frontier Province in Pakistan unanimously deemed the Qadiyyanī group among the citizens of Pakistan to be a “non-Muslim minority,” a decision also approved later by the National Assembly of Pakistan for all provinces. The Muslim World League Supreme Council declared that it is incumbent upon Muslim governments, scholars, writers, thinkers, preachers and others to combat the stray Aḥmadiyyah group (Muslim World League, 1398 AH).

 In Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya, its leader Mirza Ghulam Aḥmad Al-Qadiyanī claimed: to be a prophet and Messiah, more than ten thousand verses were revealed to him, whoever denies him is an infidel, that Muslims are required to perform Ḥajj to Qadiyan as the holy town like Makkah and Madīnah. Mirza G. Ahmad supported the coloniser by addressing letters to the English government in India, sustaining its support by declaring his anti-jihad discourse that has made the group favourable to both the colonial Europe and the Israeli occupiers of Palestine (Muslim World League, 1398 AH). The British occupiers have preserved the favour of al-Aḥmadiyya and are still spreading their deviant ideas by supporting of what they call al-Aḥmadiyyah’s translations of al-Qur’ān everywhere under the disguise of the so called reformists.

In 2012, Jamaat Kababir, held their formal, annual gathering of al-Aḥmadiyya in Ḥaifa under the umbrella of “spiritual atmosphere,” being proud of the praise they received from the former Israeli Minister Daniel Hershkowitz (Al-Masri, 2022). Ironically, the session concluded with what was called “a silent collective prayer,” by different religious groups, a fashion celebrated by Aḥmadiyya and the like of anti-Islamic Aqīdah, recently collected under the name of the Ibrahamic religion.

Al-Aḥmadiyyah has two branches; the Qadiyanī, who regard Mirza Ghulam as a prophet, and the Lahorīs who believe in Mirza’s all claims; like ‘Imam’ sent by God, the Revivalist, ‘Mehdi’, Christ, etc, but they do not declare Mirza as a true prophet (Khatm-e-nubuwwat.org). The Lahorīs have adopted “the techniques of the Christian missionaries,” and they translated their new interpretations of Islam to other languages especially into English, reaching Muslims and non-Muslims intellectuals who “Did Not Know Arabic and who were professional in European languages, especially English through which many Chinese intellectuals became connected to Aḥmadiyyah” (Eroğlu, 2022). During the Republican period (1911-1949), Aḥmadiyyah was brought to China through the instrumental revolutionaries and nationalists Wu Tegong and Sha Shanyu, who mastered English but could not read Arabic professionally, and they established China Muslim Literary Society and published “The China Muslim Journal,” to promote reform in Islam. Although both of them had no formal religious education, they became key figures in circulation, translating and interpreting religious texts. Among intellectuals who had no access to ‘Arabic sources, and through English, Aḥmadiyyah spread their ideas in China, and had an effect on one of “the first Qur’ān translation projects initiated by a group of Chinese Muslim intellectuals” (Eroğlu, 2022).

Another group is al-Barghawata, which is described as a deviation from Islam as a result of its delinquency in many matters to the Magian and Jewish traditions, as well as its mixing with some pagan rituals that were known to the Berbers before the Islamic conquest. Ṣaliḥ ibn Ṭarīf travelled to ‘Iraq and studied the science of stars and astronomy, then he returned and called his people of Berbers to believe in him as a prophet and messenger sent by Allah (Saḥban, 2019, para. 5). He argued with Ayāt, such as “وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِن رَّسُولٍ إِلَّا بِلِسَانِ قَوْمِهِ” (And We did not send a messenger except with the tongue of his people” (Ibrahīm: 4). Ṣaliḥ said Muḥammad r is An-Nabi of al-‘Arab, and he is the prophet of the Berbers. Ṣaliḥ’s call had a strong impact on the Amazigh people, as he changed their knowledge and required them to obey him in his new laws (Saḥban, 2019, para. 5). Claiming himself “صالح المؤمنين” mentioned in “Surat Al-Taḥrīm,” and the awaited Mahdī, Ṣaliḥ changed some forms of ablution, of aṣ-Ṣalat, legislating for fasting the month of Rajab instead of Ramaḍan, permitting marriage without condition, and prohibiting the slaughter of a cock, as well as changing many matters related to the rules of theft, murder, adultery, zakat and etc. (Saḥban, 2019, para. 6).

A Reliable Tarjama of Al-QK in Chinese was Needed

Although Muslims existed in China since the 10th century at the latest, no complete Chinese TMQK was circulating in print, as only very brief translated passages were included in the writings of educated Muslims (Ben-Dor, 2005). A Chinese Qur’ān primer of translated passages reached about a thirtieth of Al-QK at May Fourth era (1915–1925); at the same time when Chinese had translated “an enormous wealth of Western texts” (Song, 2003).

Li Tie Zheng 鐵錚, a non-Muslim scholar who did not read ‘Arabic, produced the earliest complete translation into Mandarin titled Kelan jing 可蘭經 (1927) not from ‘Arabic but from Japanese which itself was translated into Japanese by Sakamoto Ken-ichi from Rodwell’s English translation (1808–1900) (Eroğlu, 2022, & Song, 2003). This first translation, indirectly associated with the English translation by “a Christian” clergyman, “appeared in a limited edition only and was quickly unavailable” (Henning, 2014). The second translation involved Silas Aaron Hardoon, “a Jew” from Baghdad and Lisa Roos, his wife, “a devout Buddhist” (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014). Hardoon’s wealth from “real estate in colonial Shanghai” helped him establish a private publishing house through which “his wife, Lisa Roos, rumoured to be the daughter of a Chinese prostitute and a police officer from the French Concession, published the whole Chinese Buddhist canon” (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014). Ji Juemi, Hardoon’s general manager, and a team printed Qur’an translation in 1931, as a “thread-bound book, complete with a fold-out sketch depicting Lisa Roos and Hardoon in Chinese clothes (Juemi, 1931) with “archaic literary Chinese that was far removed from the emerging mix of literary and colloquial Chinese of the time” (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014).

Spurred on by the fact that “non-Muslims” produced two Chinese translations, Imams and Muslim intellectuals in coastal China, “intensified their own translation efforts, this time directly from ‘Arabic,” such as Imam Wang Jingzhai 王靜齋 (1879–1948), the first Muslim to present a complete TMQK (February 1932) in Beijing, once again in archaic literary Chinese” (Song, 2003). In 1946, TMQK was made available “in baihua 白話, which was accessible to literate Chinese who lacked a solid foundation in classical Chinese” (Song, 2003). Around 2014, “sixteen Chinese translations of the Qur’an by fourteen translators” appeared (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014). Wu Tegong and Sha Shanyu depended on the version of Aḥmadiyyah TMQK, a translation disapproved by the fatwa in Syria, and burnt by Al-Azhar in Egypt (Eroğlu, 2022).

In 1931, Wang Shiming reported that flyers and brochures in Arabic script apparently Islamic material advocated beliefs incommensurate with basic Islamic doctrine (Wang, 1931), and Imam Mi found that the texts actually promoted a Christian message camouflaged as pious Islamic texts, to target Muslims who “tended to see Arabic script as signifying Islam,” or “jingwen 經文, “language of the Qur’an,” and as xiwen 西文, “language of the West”” (Wang, 1931). The blind reverence of scriptural authority made Muslim communities vulnerable to manipulation and proselytizing by outsiders” (Wang, 1931). The Christian missionaries being “afraid the truth of Islam might become manifest, they assembled an Islam missionary task force with “some Arabic propaganda materials,” which on the surface, had “some Islamic flavor, and on the inside they are actually spreading the gospel” (Shiming, 1931, qtd. in Henning, 2014).

Ma says, “I became convinced that China needs a reliable Qur’an translation” in Chinese, as transmitting the Dao and attending to their duties, “the leaders would just swallow their words like dates without chewing [i.e., learn only the words without understanding them]” (Ma, 1931, pp. 1-4, qtd. in Henning, 2014). Buddhism affected translation of concepts (Ma, 1931, p. 15, qtd. in Henning, 2014). Like translators of the Bible before him, Yong Zhongming designed his version of what one might call “monotheistic Chinese” faith in one God (Ma, 1931, pp. 1-4). To extricate themselves from the enormous influence that Buddhist translation wielded over the language of spirituality in Chinese, Islamic translators needed to engage in critical etymology to achieve their own “flavor” (Ma, 1931, pp. 1-4).

Ma equally warned against seeking inspiration from Bible translation, but for a different reason: “Taking Bible translations as models for translating the Qur’an would be just as Western historians claimed: that Muhammad had taken Christianity and used it to create our religion. Given this charge, how could we possibly take Bible translations as a model for imitation?” (Ma, 1931, p. 17). Then, Ma warned against downloading preexisting Christian vocabularies for Chinese Qur’an translations. By the time Yang was working on his Qur’ān translation, in which Ma Chunyi was assisting, the Nationalists, confronting the Communists, needed to control any change of the national language, and tried to institute a standardized education system with curricula and the standard progression through the various institutional levels (Chiara, 1999). Just before “the onset of the great disciplinary language projects of the Nationalist and later Communist state,” Ma called for an Islamic version of literary Chinese (1931) challenging “the nascent nation,” and TMQK was a first step in making China part of the “Islamic world,” just as “Chen Wangdao’s translation of the Communist Manifesto had contributed to extending a worldwide communist movement into China (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014).

Lack of straightforward one-to-one correspondence between Qur’ānic terms and the Chinese lexicon challenged Muslims’ creativity to either coin neologisms or appropriate preexisting terms Chinese had created to talk about life and the soul “with a new, specifically Islamic aura, [that] their translation would read like just another Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, or Christian text” (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014). Since 1949, linguistic innovation in China witnessed “the tension between the international and the national [that] resolved in favor of the nation,” in which  translation, was a “destructive thing to do,” and ‘Arabic “had shielded the Qur’an from editorial government access to the text,” and translation by contrast “trivialized the foundational religious text by turning it into just anybody’s language and precipitated the formerly detached and untouchable text into the turmoil of local languages and their political trajectories” (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014).

Reading Al-QK in translation is only a first step toward reading it in ‘Arabic, as reading is only one textual practice among others, including recitation, calligraphy, and memorization of Al-Al-QK, whose translation “makes God’s speech comprehensible to Chinese,” enlarging God’s audience, and “to slow secularization and to shore up Islam’s presence in a modernizing China, which was “an agent of secularization,” administering and regulating Islam until “Mosques became tourist destinations” (Chiara, 1999, qtd. in Henning, 2014)

(to be continued)