The Easy Quran

Reviewed by: Abdur Raheem Kidwai – Aligarh Muslim University, India

Published by: London: Ta-Ha Publishers, 2022, 554pp. ISBN: 978-1915357007.

Of late, the appearance of reader-friendly versions rendered in easy to understand English is a desirable development in the field of English translations of the Qur’ān. The subtitle of the translation under review is illustrative of the same welcome trend: “A Translation in Simple English.” These versions are in sharp contrast to the earlier ones by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1930), Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1934-1937) and ʿAbdul Mājid Daryābādī (1957) cast in the archaic mould of the King James Bible, with such incomprehensible pronouns as thou/thine/thy, as well as numerous other obsolete expressions.

The Easy Quran opens with only a single page introduction which is, of course, insufficient for English-speaking readers who are new to the Qur’ān. To project a Sūrah as a chapter and the Qur’ān as a book is an oversimplification which might confound the readers who are not familiar with the oral, gradual revelation of the Qur’ān spanning over 23 years, compiled later under Allah’s instruction. Strictly speaking, the terms chapter and book are misnomers when applied to any Sūrah and the Qur’ān itself. In his brilliant introduction, Sayyid Mawdūdī in his Towards Understanding the Qur’ān has explained how to study the Qur’ān fruitfully, without taking the Qur’ān as a book in its terminological sense.