Exquisite Translation Capturing Qur'an's Intrinsic Beauty And Message

 Exquisite Translation Capturing Qur’an’s Intrinsic Beauty And Message

M. Bakri Musa

 

June 23, 2024

 

Book review:  The Qu’ran:  A Verse Translation, MA Rafey Habib and Bruce B Lawrence. Liveright Translation Edition (A Division of W W Norton), New York. 672 pp, February 2024. Hardcover US$32.80. ISBN 978-8-87148-499-Z

 

There are no fewer than 140 (and fast growing) English translations of the Qur’an. Most had appeared only in the last few decades. This book cover promo reads: “Islam’s founding text, rendered for the first time in flowing English verse.” Indeed it does!

 

            Rafey Habib is a Muslim, poet, and Professor of English at Rutgers. Bruce Lawrence, a mukmin(believer) but not a Muslim, is longtime Professor of Religion at Duke. Both had special connections with Malaysia, having been Fulbright Scholars there. Habib was at the International Islamic University in 2005. The emails he wrote then were both revealing and entertaining, highlighting colorful facets of Malaysiana, such as communicating with his maid who could not speak a word of English. He also had some sharp observations on Malaysian academia. Lawrence was at the University of Malaya.

 

            Habib brings “… his broad grounding in Western literature, aesthetics, literary theory, and philosophy, together with his own experience as a poet” while Lawrence his “… deep and intimate knowledge of the Qur’anic text, as well as the history of its translation in the context of the rich history of Islam.” And with a reputable publishing house, this volume is in a class of its own. As for Habib being a poet, I will dispense with the less-than-laudatory Qur’anic references to poets and poetry.

 

            The first thing a reader notices with this volume is the pleasing page design. Traditional Qur’an is packed, dispensing with paragraphs or new lines. If one verse were to end near the edge of the line, the next verse would continue right from there. No concept of spacing or any eye-easing arrangements. By contrast, the pages in this volume invite us to read. Its homage to paper economy is its two-column text. Despite that, this volume packs nearly 700 pages, including over 70 pages of introduction, preliminary notes, glossary, and the 99 names of Allah, all very informative.

 

            In style, unlike pseudo Shakespearean Yusuf Ali’s, this one is in plain modern American English sansthe “Ye” and “Thou.”

 

            Clearly “not only is the Qur’an aesthetic and musical in nature, but its meaning is inseparable from its sound…. Although the Qur’an is not poetry, it is clearly more than poetry,” the authors assert. Even the tone-deaf could appreciate its inner aural beauty and intrinsic rhythm. Recited competently, it brings tears to listeners.

 

            The authors used the word “God” instead of “Allah,” a practice also adopted by many previous translators. When Coleman Barks did that in translating Rumi, many accused Barks of subtly deemphasizing the poems’ “Islamicness.” As Rozina Ali put it in the The New Yorker, quoting Rafey Habib’s colleague and Sufi scholar at Rutgers, Jawid Mojaddedi, “The Rumi that people love is very beautiful in English, and the price you pay is to cut the culture and religion.”

 

            No, it is not a price to pay, rather a bountiful reward. Rumi is today the most popular poet in the West. Worth emphasizing, for in Malaysia there is now raging controversy over the use of the words “God” and “Allah.”

 

            The Qur’an’s central message is al-amru bi-l-maʿrūfi wa-n-nahyu ʿani-l-munkar (Surah Al Imran 3:104 and elsewhere). Habib and Lawrence’s rendition:  “enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong.” Likewise, Yusuf Ali. Abdel Haleem, “urges what is right, forbids what is wrong.” My own Malay translation has an arresting alliteration, “Biasakan yang biak, jauhi yang jahat!”

 

            My test verse, Surah Al Fatihah’s 1:5, is rendered thus:  “You alone we worship; and You alone we implore for help.” I find this second “alone” problematic. The Qur’an urges us to help others. To seek His help alone would contradict that. When you are sick you seek the help of physicians, then pray that he would make the right decisions. During my youth and later as a surgeon in Malaysia, I saw many preventable deaths among villagers as they sought help from God alone. I prefer Yusuf Ali’s non-exclusive “. . . Your aid we seek!”

 

            As for Ayat 1:6, “Guide us to the straight path,” the “to” also rests uneasily on me. It implies that we are not now on the straight path. The Qur’an states that our fitrah (natural tendency) is towards good. As such I prefer “along,” implying that we are already on the straight path, now just keep on it!

 

            As for “the most controversial directive about women,” Al Nisa 4:34, Habib and Lawrence render it thus:  “. . . But, if you suspect misconduct from them [meaning the wives], first counsel them, then withdraw from their beds, then resort to [harmless] force.” Harmless as whipping with a wet noodle? Hossein Nasr’s translation was more brutal, “. . . strike them;” Abdel Haleem’s, “. . . hit them;” Yusuf Ali’s, “beat them.”

 

            The late Syrian engineer Muhammad Shahrour gave a refreshingly enlightened interpretation. To him that verse has nothing to do with husbands and wives rather leaders and followers. Gender-specific pronouns were a later development in Arabic linguistics, he argued. Thus the verse refers more to followers disobeying their leaders. During war, that could result in execution; likewise with the Mafia.

 

            When he was at Stanford, Notre Dame University’s Ebrahim Moosa once told our congregation here in Morgan Hill, California, that the day you feel that you have mastered the Qur’an is the day you die. Reading The Qur’an: A Verse Translation makes me feel that I have a lot more to learn. I pray to Allah, and only to Him, that He would grant me a long healthy life to pursue that. Ameen!