By Shakir Husain
NEW DELHI, March 18 (Bernama) -- An Indian scholar has published a new English translation of the Holy Quran with the aim of presenting the divine message of guidance "in the way Islam's earliest generations understood it."
An Al-Azhar-educated scholar, Zafarul Islam Khan, 77, took about 12 years to finish the work, with the three years from 2020 to 2023 being so intense that, despite being an avid newspaper reader, he had no time to even glance at daily news headlines.
Having received his education in India, Egypt, and Britain, he is fluent in Urdu, Arabic, and English and has written or translated dozens of books in these three languages. Before that, he worked as a translator-editor with the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs for six years.
The holder of a PhD in Islamic Studies from Manchester University and a research fellow at The Muslim Institute in London (1979–1992), he decided to revise Abdullah Yusuf Ali's popular English translation of the Quran while performing Haj with his wife in 2010.
"A translation in easy-to-understand language was needed. I began my first revision in January 2011 and completed it in August 2012," he told Bernama.
However, there were further revisions and an unexpected delay was caused by a computer hard-disk crash.
Zafarul Islam balanced various social, educational, scholarly, and community commitments while working on the translation. Upon retiring from this body, he dedicated himself to the project full-time, completing "a fresh and thorough revision" within a year and emailing it in parts to 70 Islamic scholars and Arabic professors worldwide for review.
He presented the published volume at a recent event at the India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi.
Speakers at the event included religious scholars and professors of Arabic.
"My aim in publishing this translated work has been to understand and present the Glorious Quran as understood by the earliest generations of Islam. Contrary to many recent and even some old tafsirs (exegeses), I did not try to thrust and prove any preconceived idea. I relied on the oldest and most authoritative Arabic works of tafsir and lexicons," he said.
Zafarul Islam has published his translation in two editions: one that includes the Arabic text and another in English only. Both editions feature discussions on various topics in the Quran, a summary of the life of Prophet Muhammad, explanations of Islamic terms and their contexts, and an index.
"I have presented Islam as taught by the Prophet and not according to the versions later concocted by various groups and factions. If we understand the true meanings of the Quran, all petty differences will end," Zafarul Islam said.
He believes the volume will greatly help those who rely on the English language for learning the Quran and Islam.
His next project is to publish a thorough subject index of the Quran covering various terms, ideas, events, names, ancient communities, peoples and places mentioned in the Quran.
-- BERNAMA
