Mistranslations of Islamic Scripture (English)

Quran 15:9 declares that the Qur'an is Allah's revelation and that he promises to preserve it and protect it from corruption. In Quran 16:103, Quran 44:58 and Quran 54:22, 32, 40, it is emphasized that the Qur'an was revealed in straight forward, easy to understand, and pure Arabic. Islamic scholars agree that all that which is fundamental to Islam (particularly most of Islamic law) which is not contained in the Quran must have been preserved in the form of hadiths. However, translations of these scriptures have not always been rendered faithfully, particularly in recent times and especially when the audience concerned is that of a developed, first-world variety which likely holds to advanced notions of human rights and liberty.

Some of the most prominent and officially recognized English translators of the Qur'an (like Yusuf Ali, Dr. Rashad Khalifa and Muhammad Asad), however, have often mistranslated the most controversial and problematic verses in Qur'an. That these inaccurate translations are most common with verses that would be considered barbaric, unscientific, or crude in the West suggests that these mistranslations were not unintentional or due to some unique difficulty of the Arabic words used in these verses. Similar mistranslations have been observed in translations of the hadiths as well as in translations of other key Islamic texts, such as legal manuals.

Quran

(4:34) Wife-beating

Quran 4:34 famously instructs men to beat their wives and forms the basis of the Islamic legal ruling which permits as much. The below translation is taken from Yusuf Ali.

This verse states that men are in charge of women with what they spend on them, and have the right to direct them in life. Also in the same verse, women are told to obey men and if they don’t, then men have the authority to admonish them and if they persist in disobedience (or, read more literally, if the husband simply fears disobedience), then men may proceed to beat them. Yusuf Ali, a prominent translator of the Qur'an, adds the word “lightly” in brackets, after “beating them”, presumably to reduce offense.

(23:14) Fetal development

Quran 23:14 presents a schema regarding the development of the human fetus. The following translations are taken from Pickthall an Yusuf Ali.

This verse is often used as an example of how translators (in this case Yusuf Ali, who is authorized by the Saudi Islamic authority and Al-Azhar University) have often attempted to distort verses in order to make them appear less objectionable to Western audiences.

Yusuf Ali, in his translation, replaces the word "then" with "and". He also replaces “the best of creators” (plural) with “the best to create” (singular). The difference in the meaning is crucial because the word “then” suggests another and separate phase, while the word “and” means bones and flesh form simultaneously or during one phase, which conforms to modern science. However this does not appear in the original Arabic text.

Likewise, the plural form of “creators” seems to affirm the existence of multiple creators (of whom Allah would be the best), which appears to contradict the key Islamic doctrine of tawḥīd (توحيد) regarding the oneness of Allah, the only creator. Similar mistranslations are given by the Rashad Khalifa and Muhammad Saad translations. By contrast, the Pickthal translation is more accurate in this case, conforming to the original Arabic text.

Similarly distorted translations are also presented by institutions such as al-Azhar, the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, as is seen on the Al-Azhar web site. The above verse is shown as below:

The translation of which on the Al-Azhar website reads as follows:

(18:86) Sun sets in a muddy spring

Another example can be found in Al-Kahf.

According to this verse, Dhul-Qarnayn (Alexander the Great) went to the farthest place on earth “until he reached the setting of the sun, he found out that the sun sinks in a hole of muddy water, and found people there..” Some have tried to explain the apparent absurdity in this verse by claiming it is simply a visual interpretation of what Dhul-Qarnayn saw, the sun apparently looked like it was sinking into the “horizon”. But such explanations are frustrated by Tafsir Al-Jalaleen (p. 251), and many other classical authorities, which explain that the setting of the sun is in a well containing a murky mud. We find the same interpretation and text in Tabari’s commentaries (p. 339) as well as in "Concise Interpretation of the Tabari" (p. 19 of part 2) in which he remarks that the well in which the sun sets "contains lime and murky mud". The words “apparent” or “looks like” do not appear in these explanations. Indeed, the verse appears to reflect the worldview Muhammad would have had in seventh century Arabia in regards to the universes' cosmology. Furthermore, since the earth is in fact round, not flat (as the Qur'an appears to suggest), Dhul-Qarnayn could never have reached some "farthest point", since no such point exists on a globe. Here also, the Al-Azhar site uses a distorted translation, where it states that the "muddy spring" is in fact the Atlantic ocean, which only appeared to Dhul-Qarnayn as a muddy spring. Others have suggested that it was Dhul-Qarnayn's “opinion” and not the Qur'an's.

In At-Tariq, the Qur'an says that sperm originates from an area between the breastbone and the backbone.

The Al-Azhar site translates the origination point of sperm as from "between the pelvis and breast bone"; neither of these translations, however, mention the role of the testes.

In Quran 2:10 it says that unbelievers are creatures sick in their hearts and Allah increases their sickness, but the translation distorts the verse to exonerate Allah from playing this role.

Another instance of distorted translation can be found in Az-Zumar.

However, the word "butun" which is translated in this verse as "womb", in fact means, quite clearly, "stomach".

The most widespread mistranslation of a single word throughout the Qur'an, is the Arabic word "Qatal", which means to "kill", "massacre", or "slaughter". Yusuf Ali correctly translates it in An-Nisa’ Quran 4:157 as "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not", but then distorts the same word as "fight" in At-Tawbah Quran 9:29, "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day.", whereas the Arabic text reads "Kill those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day". Yusuf Ali reproduces this translation in Al-Anfal Quran 8:39 and several other verses.

(67:5) Shooting stars

Here is the literal meaning of verse 67:5. It discusses the Jinn (mythical ethereal creatures that are described in Islamic scriptures as living among humans)^[1] and stars from the "lowest heaven" which are used as missiles against any mischievous jinn that attempts to eavesdrop on conversations between angels.^[2]

• ٱلسَّمَآءَ (as-samaa'a) means heaven or sky ^[4]
• ٱلدُّنْيَا (ad-dunya) is translated "the world" or "the lower". The world" is called "the lower", because according to Islamic cosmology the heavens appear one atop the other and the earth is the lowest in this structure.
  • So ٱلسَّمَآءَ ٱلدُّنْيَا could be understood as "the lowest heaven", "the heaven right above this flat earth", "the sky above The Lower".
  • See Dunya and akhira word count in the Qur'an
• بِمَصَٰبِيحَ (bi-masaabeeh) - you can google images of مصابيح to see its meaning is "lamps" even in today's Arabic.
• رُجُومًا (rujooman) - notice it is from the same root as رجم (rajm), meaning "stoning", which is the Islamic punishment for sex outside marriage. The Shaytan is also called "ar-rajeem" (الرجيم), "the stoned one", possibly because of this verse.

Accurate translations

Here are the three most popular and readily available translations of this verse by Muslims.

The following four translations are by non-Muslims whose work are sometimes viewed with suspicion among Muslims, yet their renditions match those of the three generally accepted and popular translations.

A further twelve Muslim translations also confirm this.

Distorted Translations

The following two translations attempt to alter the idea of stars being made for the purpose of stoning jinn by describing the missiles as being made out of/from the stars, but not the stars themselves.

The next two translations include their modifications without using brackets, giving the impression that their understanding of the verse was already, in essence, conveyed by the original Arabic.

In the following two translations, the lamps and the projectiles used against the devilish jinn are referred to as separate entities, though this disagrees with the Arabic text in which there is a pronoun used to refer to the "projectiles" whose clear antecedent is the plural word "lamps".

Reinterpretations Presented as Translation

The following translations depart entirely from the classical interpretations of the verse and, it would appear, the very wording of the verse itself.

The next three translations go a little further by asserting that the "devils/evil ones" refer to evil human cohorts and not to the jinn.

Incorporation of Modern Science into Translation

The following translation attempts to incorporate modern science into its reading of the verse, though makes it a point to use brackets to differentiate this interpretation from the words of the verse.

Hadith

Aisha's age at consummation

'Aisha lived with her parents before her marriage to Muhammad was consummated at the age of 9 (Sahih Muslim 8:3310). The following mistranslation is often presented as evidence that she reached puberty while she still lived there.

The word أَعْقِلْ means to use thoughts or reasoning, but the translator Muhsin Khan has used the word 'puberty'. The meaning rather is that 'Aisha was never aware of a time when her parents were not Muslim. A literal translation would be "I was not aware of my parents other than that the two of them both acknowledged the religion" (لَمْ أَعْقِلْ أَبَوَىَّ إِلاَّ وَهُمَا يَدِينَانِ الدِّينَ). The same Arabic phrase is translated as follows in another hadith by the same translator:

See also the two other occurrences in Sahih Bukhari 3:37:494 and Sahih Bukhari 5:58:245.

The 'puberty' mistranslation also fails to achieve chronological sensibility. 'Aisha's father, Abu Bakr, was one of Muhammad's first followers. It would not have taken until puberty for 'Aisha to notice that her father followed the religion.

See Also

• Misrepresentations of Islamic Scripture (English)
• Mawdu' (Fabricated) and Daif (Weak) Hadiths

External Links

• The Deceptive Translations of the Quran - (archived), http://www.faithfreedom.org/the-deceptive-translations-of-the-quran/