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Theme Changer

 Topic: The Quran in English

 (Read 6216 times)
  • 12 Next page « Previous thread | Next thread »
  • The Quran in English
     OP - August 31, 2014, 11:53 PM

    So I'm aware that muslims claim that the Quran is only the Quran in the original Arabic. I have read parts of the Quran in English and it seems very awkwardly phrased, repetitive, and most of the time quite opaque. Read in English, there are precious few parts that sound nice.

    How much of the Quran do you think gets lost in translation? Is it really quite different when read in the original Arabic? Are the meaning of words in Arabic really so malleable as apologists make them seem when trying to harmonize contradictions, scientific errors, and misogynistic verses?

    I am frustrated that when it comes to researching Islam, apparently I can't seem to say much anything unless I know classical Arabic. I never encountered this when I researched Christianity(no requirement to know ancient greek to discuss the text). I guess my main question is how much validity is there to the claim that the quran must be read in arabic to understand its meaning? It seems that this is just an apologetic smokescreen but I would like to hear what you guys think(especially arabic speakers).

    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #1 - September 01, 2014, 12:03 AM

    I would love to share my opinion but my laptop is broken and this tablet is hard to use for typing purposes. In short, my views are that a knowledge of Arabic is certainly beneficial but having to know Arabic in order to understand the Quran leads to somewhat of a contradiction. The appeal to Arabic fails as a last ditch attempt to save face when confronted with awkward questions.  I will try to elaborate at a later date, when I have my laptop back.

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #2 - September 01, 2014, 02:02 PM

    Think about it this way.

    The OT, NT and intertestamental texts were written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic ( for convenience we'll ignore Ge'ez, Slavonic, Armenian, Gothic and Coptic ). There were a number of Greek translations of the OT in the classical era, and the Latin Vulgate of the 4th century was likewise based on the Hebrew text of the OT. Parts of both the OT ( especially the Psalms ) and the NT were already being translated into European vernaculars by the 9th century - and there has been a continuous process of translation activity into vernacular tongues- often done by accomplished poets and fine prose stylists -  that has been ongoing for over a thousand years, which has, moreover, integrated an ever greater breadth and depth of linguistic, historical and textual scholarship to give us really superb translations of most, if not all, the canonical and non-canonical texts; the more recent recovery of dead ANE languages and cultures ( Ugaritic, Egyptian Hieroglyphic texts, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite family etc etc ) and the continuing recovery of relevant textual material  ( from Oxyrrynchus, Elephantine, El-Amarna, Maari, Hattusa, Nineveh, Qumran etc ) - has also broadened our understanding of the texts.

    One of the cultural by-products of this has been the enrichment of vernacular languages and the continuing cultural resonance of the texts, regardless of whether one ascribes to the belief systems or theologies that have been erected on them.

    By contrast, the field of Quranic translation is still in its infancy.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #3 - September 01, 2014, 02:06 PM

    Muslims would misunderstan what you just said and claim that the Quran has been preserved in its original language perfectly, and that no other language has been preserved as Arabic. They fail to see that Quranic Arabic is a dead language no one speaks or fully understands...

    "The healthiest people I know are those who are the first to label themselves fucked up." - three
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #4 - September 01, 2014, 02:42 PM

    Think about it this way.

    The OT, NT and intertestamental texts were written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic ( for convenience we'll ignore Ge'ez, Slavonic, Armenian, Gothic and Coptic ). There were a number of Greek translations of the OT in the classical era, and the Latin Vulgate of the 4th century was likewise based on the Hebrew text of the OT. Parts of both the OT ( especially the Psalms ) and the NT were already being translated into European vernaculars by the 9th century - and there has been a continuous process of translation activity into vernacular tongues- often done by accomplished poets and fine prose stylists -  that has been ongoing for over a thousand years, which has, moreover, integrated an ever greater breadth and depth of linguistic, historical and textual scholarship to give us really superb translations of most, if not all, the canonical and non-canonical texts; the more recent recovery of dead ANE languages and cultures ( Ugaritic, Egyptian Hieroglyphic texts, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite family etc etc ) and the continuing recovery of relevant textual material  ( from Oxyrrynchus, Elephantine, El-Amarna, Maari, Hattusa, Nineveh, Qumran etc ) - has also broadened our understanding of the texts.

    One of the cultural by-products of this has been the enrichment of vernacular languages and the continuing cultural resonance of the texts, regardless of whether one ascribes to the belief systems or theologies that have been erected on them.

    By contrast, the field of Quranic translation is still in its infancy.

    .
    Interesting, do you think that there is a correlation between hermeneutics and apologetics?  I would suggest that this hypothesis is more likely given the assumed truth of your conclusion. This is apparent when we examine Islamic vs Christian apologetics.

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #5 - September 01, 2014, 02:44 PM

    Cornflower

    Depends on which muslims you're talking about - there are actually religious muslims who do understand this, but since the 1990's they've understandably been keeping a low profile. The more secular/atheist muslims that I know wouldn't bat an eyelid at the suggestion.

    Then again, you do have to wonder about the qualities of a text that is supposedly inherently untranslateable - no such claims are made about the OT, NT, Homer or a wide variety of other ancient texts, which continue to have a great deal of cultural, linguistic and artistic vitality - the Quran, is a bit of a sterile patch by comparison.

    The simple rejoinder is that the text of Homer has been preserved for 2700 years ( that's nearly twice as long as the Quran has been in existence - on earth at any rate ). Given that the Homeric corpus was so extensively quoted by other ancient authors, this is readily verifiable.

    The Hebrew Masoretic text of the canonical OT has been verifiably stable since about the second century BCE - with some parts considerably older than that.

  • The Quran in English
     Reply #6 - September 01, 2014, 02:48 PM

    Thanks Josephus, this is indeed food for thought. The Muslims I am talking about are generally those who promote falsafah and kalaam above all else as a medium for promulgation of the faith.

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #7 - September 01, 2014, 02:51 PM

    Qtian

    I don't see how apologetics can be divorced from hermeneutics ( or in the case of fundamentalist approaches "anti-hermeneutics", which is a hermeneutic of sorts ). Then again most fundamentalist approaches are just cherry-picks to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion.

    Mostly, I think that the "Islamic Academy" as it were, is still stuck intellectually in the middle ages.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #8 - September 01, 2014, 03:29 PM

    Josephus. I agree with the statement in that apologetics and hermeneutics can't be divorced... even in views such as natural theology.  I believe that Islamic apologetics are far behind their Christian counterpart  and the confounding variable could be the state of "hermeneutics" or resistance to reform as a subset of exegetical (eisegesis in some cases) approaches.

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #9 - September 01, 2014, 04:32 PM

    My simple answer is that the Qur'an was not written in Classical Arabic, so why would I read it in Classical Arabic?

    The traditional Classical Arabic readings are, themselves, incompetent translations of the underlying language reflected in the rasm of the Qur'an.  Like any translation, they are not useless, but often as likely to mislead as illuminate.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #10 - September 01, 2014, 04:37 PM

    I've come across discussions about how the Arabic language was catered around the Quran. Does anyone know of some reading material which explores this claim?

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #11 - September 01, 2014, 04:43 PM

    Muslims would misunderstan what you just said and claim that the Quran has been preserved in its original language perfectly, and that no other language has been preserved as Arabic. They fail to see that Quranic Arabic is a dead language no one speaks or fully understands...


    Is the original language the authorised 1920's Cairo version?

    I have recently been reading a new translation of the Iliad.  It is surprising the differences another translator introduces.  Maybe the problem is the fiction of the fixed in stone Quran?  Why wasn't it on stone like Moses got from God?

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #12 - September 01, 2014, 04:45 PM

    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/02/arts/scholars-are-quietly-offering-new-theories-of-the-koran.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

    Quote
    Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran
    By ALEXANDER STILLE
    Published: March 2, 2002


    This discusses things tangentially

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #13 - September 01, 2014, 04:56 PM

    For once Wiki seems quite good!

    Quote
    Richard Kroes summarises the argument of the book as follows:

    According to Luxenberg, the Qur'an was not written in classical Arabic but in a mixed Arabic-Syriac language, the traders' language of Mecca and it was based on Christian liturgical texts. When the final text of the Qur'an was codified, those working on it did not understand the original sense and meaning of this hybrid trading language any more, and they forcefully and randomly turned it into classical Arabic. This gave rise to a lot of misinterpretations. Something like this can only have happened if there was a gap in the oral transmission of the Qur'anic text. That idea is in serious disagreement with the views of both traditional Muslims and western scholars of Islam.[3]

    Thesis[edit]
    The work advances the thesis that critical sections of the Qur'an have been misread by generations of readers and Muslim and Western scholars, who consider classical Arabic as the language of the Qur'an. Luxenberg's analysis suggests that the prevalent Syro-Aramaic language up to the 7th century formed a stronger etymological basis for its meaning.[4][5]

    A notable trait of early written Arabic was that it lacked vowel signs and diacritic points which would later distinguish e.g. B, T, N, Y ب ت ن ي (Defective script), and thus was prone to misinterpretation. The diacritical points were added around the turn of the eighth century on orders of Al-Hajjaj bin Yousef, governor of Iraq (694–714).

    Luxenberg remarks that the Qur'an contains much ambiguous and even inexplicable language. He asserts that even Muslim scholars find some passages difficult to parse and have written reams of Quranic commentary attempting to explain these passages. However, the assumption behind their endeavours has always been, according to him, that any difficult passage is true, meaningful, and pure Arabic, and that it can be deciphered with the tools of traditional Muslim scholarship. Luxenberg accuses Western academic scholars of the Qur'an of taking a timid and imitative approach, relying too heavily on the biased work of Muslim scholars.

    The book's thesis is that the Qur'an was not originally written exclusively in Arabic but in a mixture with Syriac, the dominant spoken and written language in the Arabian peninsula through the 8th century.

    “   What is meant by Syro-Aramaic (actually Syriac) is the branch of Aramaic in the Near East originally spoken in Edessa and the surrounding area in Northwest Mesopotamia and predominant as a written language from Christianization to the origin of the Koran. For more than a millennium Aramaic was the lingua franca in the entire Middle Eastern region before being gradually displaced by Arabic beginning in the 7th century.[6]   ”
    Luxenberg argues that scholars must start afresh, ignore the old Islamic commentaries, and use only the latest in linguistic and historical methods. Hence, if a particular Quranic word or phrase seems meaningless in Arabic, or can be given meaning only by tortured conjectures, it makes sense – he argues – to look to the Aramaic and Syriac languages as well as Arabic.

    Luxenberg also argues that the Qur'an is based on earlier texts, namely Syriac lectionaries used in the Christian churches of Syria, and that it was the work of several generations who adapted these texts into the Qur'an we know today.


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Aramaic_Reading_of_the_Koran

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #14 - September 01, 2014, 05:40 PM

    If the koran is a translation of a lexicon, a book of readings, maybe those untranslatable letters are just that - letters to guide teachers to the bit they are going to read that day?

    And surely the predecessors exist?

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #15 - September 02, 2014, 05:44 AM

    So what I've gathered is a much more detailed linguistic study is necessary to properly ascertain the original meaning of the Quran while many muslim scholars have interpreted things primarily through a pure arabic reading and tafsirs. Am I understanding this correctly?

    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #16 - September 02, 2014, 08:31 AM

    Great posts, Josephus...

    ( that's nearly twice as long as the Quran has been in existence - on earth at any rate )

    ...and a half-decent gag.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #17 - September 02, 2014, 09:10 AM

    As Latin was also a major language of the time, what in the koran is Latin?

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #18 - September 02, 2014, 02:21 PM

    I've come across discussions about how the Arabic language was catered around the Quran. Does anyone know of some reading material which explores this claim?


    I don't know about reading material, but the claim that is being advanced is ridiculous - if you think about the Quranic lexicon ( ie the number of different words that are in the text ) it's tiny - somewhere between 1500 and 2000 if my understanding of the matter is correct. Obviously this was only a small subset of the Arabic lexicon in the 6th/7th centuries.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #19 - September 02, 2014, 04:14 PM

    The claim is ridiculous in one sense and correct in another.  It's ridiculous in one obvious sense ...  there are written records in types of Arabic that precede the Qur'an by centuries.  There are also a number of post-Mohammed Arabic texts and inscriptions, which interestingly enough never mention the Qur'an or Mohammed until you get to around the year 690.

    So in no way was Arabic created by the Qur'an.

    If you change the wording, however, to say that *Classical Arabic* is, in large part, an attempt to make sense out of the Qur'an in the context of the linguistic/theological ideals and tafsir of the 9th/10th centuries, thereby contrasting Classical Arabic with the varieties of spoken Arabic and Arabic-ish vernacular/dialect prevalent throughout the Middle East at that time, then I'd agree.  The real question is how much of a connection Classical Arabic has with the language(s) that the Qur'an's basic rasm was originally written in.

    On that subject, I agree entirely with Guillaume Dye's position in this fantastical article:

    http://www.academia.edu/4730102/Traces_of_Bilingualism_Multilingualism_in_Quranic_Arabic

    Specifically on the subject of Classical v. Qur'anic Arabic:

    "The Arabic of the Qur’ān is certainly not identical with Classical Arabic (which I take more as a socio-linguistic label than as a strictly historical one), and some aspects of its grammar which strike us as a bit strange may simply reveal linguistic usage, not always congruent with the later standardization of Classical Arabic grammar (even if Qur’ānic Arabic, as we know it, is partly the result of the standardization of the language represented by the rasm), in some part of the Arabic-speaking world, at a particular time."

    Further,

    "We should also remember that Qur’ānic Arabic may not necessarily be as homogeneous as generally assumed – and this should be no surprise. Qur’ānic Arabic, of course, is the Arabic of the Qur’ān – a tautology, which should not hide, however, two significant points. First, there is a probable hiatus between the language represented by the rasm (closer, at least in part, to the vernacular), and the language represented by the qirā’āt, which display the influence of the poetic language. Moreover, the Qur’ān, strictly speaking, is not a book, but a corpus, namely, the gathering of relatively independent texts, which belong to various literary genres and are, in several ways, somewhat heterogeneous (for example, the style and vocabulary – see the numerous hapax legomena – of the many “oracular suras” at the end of the Qur’ānic corpus are quite different from those of the other parts of the Qur’ān; more generally, the literary and stylistic quality is uneven)."
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #20 - September 02, 2014, 04:22 PM

    Thanks guys

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #21 - September 02, 2014, 04:22 PM

    Btw, if you accept Dye's position (as I do), this means that the Qur'an is, for all intents and purposes, almost unreadable EXCEPT in translation into another language.  Reading the Qur'an's original rasm correctly off-the-cuff in any particular language is absolutely impossible.  Even reading single ayas requires immense sophistication across multiple Semitic languages, many of which (like Arabic dialects) are barely attested by historical evidence.  Combined with a sophisticated knowledge of Semitic *orthographies*.  Combined with a sophisticated knowledge of Near-Eastern *religious texts, communities, and practices*.  In short, it requires massive scholarly efforts by multiple different experts working together to puzzle the text out, and then explain (in another language) what it likely means.  You can no more simply 'read' and understand it in a particular language than you could simply pick up and read the Zoroastrian Gathas in a particular language. 

    Classical Arabic is itself a sort of linguistic apparatus designed to MAKE it possible for believing Muslims to read the Qur'an in a particular Arabic translation, with particular pious explanations of what that language means and refers to (in tradition Muslim belief).  Classical Arabic is in some sense a combined effort of the sort I describe above, reflecting generations of brilliant Muslim scholars working together on defining the idealized Arabic language, its meaning, and its relationship with the Qur'an.  The problem, of course, is that those scholars were both blinded by religious dogmas and lacking in knowledge regarding the languages and circumstances of the Qur'an's original composition.  Nonetheless, the overall structure they created is so impressive that it has in effect retarded and derailed research on the original language and linguistic situation that underlies the Qur'an's text.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #22 - September 02, 2014, 04:44 PM

    Zaotar ,I really appreciate the information... this is an area which I have a growing interest in.
    If you have any other resources, feel free to send me a message.

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #23 - September 02, 2014, 07:46 PM

    https://twitter.com/HATzortzis/status/504531413358878720/photo/1

    lol?

    My mind runs, I can never catch it even if I get a head start.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #24 - September 02, 2014, 11:11 PM

    Jesus zaotar you know your shit! Thanks for helping me understand! I'm thinking about reading luxemburg's book on the Syrio-Aramaic origins of the Quran. Do you think that would be too difficult to follow for someone like me who has no knowledge of Arabic?

    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #25 - September 03, 2014, 12:13 AM

    Jesus zaotar

    That's pushing it a bit, but thanks again, Zaotar.

    You also resist the urge to mask your scholarship with long words. Much appreciated.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #26 - September 08, 2014, 04:19 PM

    In my final months as a believer, I used to perform all prayers and read quran in English translation.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #27 - September 11, 2014, 01:48 PM

    Zaotar is amazing, I'll give him/her that Smiley I read that Guillaume Dye article and I've since gone off on a thousand crazy quests to learn about the real history of Islam.

    Could the Quran, unreadable in its original form as it is, be someone's "Finnegans Wake"? James Joyce took some old Norse myths, added his own words and long-forgotten ones, and layered  enough meta-levels to make my head spin by just looking at the cover.

    Dumb question: is it possible to get online versions of this "original rasm" of the Quran that Zaotar speaks of? Not knowing any Arabic other than repeating magical incantations aka dua, I wonder if most of the Quran was actually treated as incantations rather than texts for study. Just as Psalms and chants are sung not so much for their content but for the link they supposedly have with the divine, sometimes only the song survives the centuries but the meaning is lost.
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #28 - September 11, 2014, 03:11 PM

    Zaotar is amazing, I'll give him/her that Smiley

     I read that Guillaume Dye article and I've since gone off on a thousand crazy quests to learn about the real history of Islam.
    ..........................

    yes Zaotar., He   does read a lot and have in depth background on early  Islamic history shaytanshoes.,

    dr. Guillaume Dye wrote interesting books on "Origins of Quran w.r.t Bible  ...I wonder whether you read  his book on "Qurʾānic Studies in Light of Biblical and New Testament Studies: some reflections"

    The other book is from GUNTER LULING..,

    " A Challenge to Islam for Reformation: The Rediscovery and Reliable Reconstruction of a Comprehensive Pre-Islamic Christian Hymnal Hidden in the Koran under Earliest Islamic Reinterpretations." By GUNTER LULING.


    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim
     
  • The Quran in English
     Reply #29 - September 11, 2014, 03:53 PM

    Thanks for the links. The usual PDF links already prove a lot for me to digest while most of these books are far beyond my abilities. Pardon me for saying this but I wish these scholars could write for the average reader instead of for fellow linguists and historians. Then the average wishy-washy Muslim might realize enough to tip him/her over to the side of reason.

    But then again, looking at the sheer number and political power of Christian and Jewish fundamentalists all over the world, I'm not so sure. Both faiths have had their texts researched from a secular angle for lots longer yet there are still people who believe their holy book came down inerrant from heaven.
  • 12 Next page « Previous thread | Next thread »