The Message

There is nothing on record about the authors of this new English translation of the Qur’an. They speak of their work as ‘the result of a group effort by people who do not belong to any denomination’ (p. i). However, in their zeal to appropriate neutrality, they appear to have gone too far by way of not including even a single explanatory note, glossary or any other background information about the varied contents of the Qur’an. They believe that ‘footnotes and appendices reflect the views of the denomination of the translator’ (p. i). This is nothing short of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Most readers studying the Qur’an in English do not have access to Arabic and the rich tafsir corpus. It is they who need most some background information about the Qur’an, its pivotal role in Islam, its worldview, its place in the series of the divine scriptures and its relevance for the guidance of mankind, including Muslims in today’s turbulent world. More importantly, the readers should be told briefly about the context and circumstantial setting of the Qur’anic Surahs and their verses. Otherwise, how can the uninitiated readers make much sense of Surahs al-Duha, al-Sharh, al-Fil, al-Kawthar, [Abasa, Quraysh, al-Masad, al-Rum, Luqman, Yunus, Yusuf, Hud, Ibrahim, etc. How can they decipher on their own numerous Qur’anic references to persons, places, concepts, and terms? It is naïve on the translators’ part to assume that a bare translation can ‘let the text speak for itself and deliver to the reader a rendition of the pure message of the Quran’ (p. i).