USA: 'Muslim reformation' and new Koran translation

[Harold Schiffman]

I have always been under the impression that while translations of the Koran
do exist,
they are not considered "valid".  Only the original Arabic one is "valid".
Of course one
could argue about what "validity" means, but at least people don't claim
that the King James
version of the Christian Bible is not "valid" but of course there have been
people who did condemn
certain translations  as "heretical" so there's another term for all to
contemplate!

HSchiffman

On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 10:58 AM, Damien Hall <halldj at babel.ling.upenn.edu>
wrote:

> There was an interesting piece on the BBC Newshour this morning (Monday 3
> March
> 2008) about a 'reformation' which many American Muslim women would like to
> see,
> in which women can lead prayers, among other things.  In particular, one
> section
> of the piece is on a new English translation of the Koran, done by a New
> York
> Muslim woman, Dr Laleh Bakhtiar.  As far as I understand it, new
> translations /
> linguistic analysis aren't usually done because of the sacred nature of
> the
> text, so it's interesting that she's done this at all.  The piece also
> says
> some fascinating things about the translation:  it uses the word 'God',
> not
> 'Allah', among other things.
>
> The programme is online now (Monday morning EST) at
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/newshour.shtml
>
> The section on the 'reformation' is from 20'10" to 28'40";  within it, the
> interview with Dr Bakhtiar begins at about 24'40" and goes on until about
> 26'00".
>
> The website says that the online broadcast is updated twice a day, so I'm
> not
> sure how long this programme will stay there;  also, I'm not sure whether
> old
> programmes are archived anywhere online.  But there's more information on
> the
> new translation available elsewhere online, since it's not brand-new:  do
> a
> search of
>
> translation koran america
>
> and some news-stories will appear.
>
> Damien Hall
> University of Pennsylvania
>
>


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Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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