Answering Islam

H.A.R. Gibb wrote:

"Muslim orthodoxy has generally been opposed to the translation of the Koran even into other Islamic languages, although the Arabic text is sometimes accompanied by interlinear translations in Turkish, Persian, Urdu, and so forth.¹ This attitude is SUPPORTED BY THEOLOGICAL REASONING which is quite self-consistent but possibly rationalizes to some extent objections derived from rather differernt considerations, for the Koran IS ESSENTIALLY UNTRANSLATABLE, in the same way that great poetry is untranslatable ..."

1: "The ulema of al-Azhar now take the view that the use of translations of the K for non-liturgical purposes by non-Arab Muslims is permissible ... The opposite view is strongly argued by the Salafi Shaikh Rashid Rida ... in his treatise, Tarjamat al-Qur'an (Cairo, 1926)."

(H.A.R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1947, pp.3,4; emphasis mine)

The point is this: orthodox Islam, for the greatest part of its existence, has left the Qur'an untranslated because of its view of the Arabic from Allah.

more to come ...

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