From Orientalism to Interfaith Dialogue

THE QURAN AND THE BIBLE: TEXT AND COMMENTARY. By Gabriel Said Reynolds. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Pp. 1,008. ISBN: 9780300181326.

THE QURAN. Edited by Jane McAuliffe. New York: W. W. Norton, 2017. Pp. 644. ISBN: 9780393927054.

THE KORAN IN ENGLISH: A BIOGRAPHY. By Bruce B. Lawrence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Pp. 245. ISBN: 9780691155586.

Until the early 20th century, translating the Qur’an into English, or other modern European languages, was the exclusive preserve of Orientalist scholarship. The enterprise was, in general, indisputably polemical and derogatory even if it deemed itself ‘critical’. The English reading public could familiarize itself with the Qur’anic message and teachings only through the ideologically slanted and theologically sectarian versions produced by George Sale (1734), J. M. Rodwell (1861), E. H. Palmer (1880) and Richard Bell (1937–1939). However, the scene has now refreshingly changed. Today English-speaking readers can draw upon reliable and reader-friendly translations in the chaste and accessible idiom of the day. Not only do these translations cogently and energetically bring out the meaning and message of the Qur’an, they also help readers relate the Qur’anic guidance to the issues of our times, brought into high relief by the forces and ideologies of modernity, that range from pluralism to gender parity, globalization and discrimination of Muslim minorities in secular nation-states, interfaith accord and, of course, terrorism.