Reinterpreting Koran

New translation of Quranic verse ignites controversy
By Khalid Hasan
Daily Times, March 26, 2007

WASHINGTON: A “feminist” translation of a Quranic verse by a US-based Iranian-American woman scholar is being denounced as inaccurate and misleading.

The academic, Laleh Bakhtiar, who has spent seven years on a translation of the Quran is under fire because of her rendition of Verse 34 of the Surah Al Nisa. The verse as translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali says, “As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty or ill conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share their beds (and last) beat them (lightly) but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance) for God is most high, great (above you all)”.

Bakhtiar says the most common translation for the Arabic word “daraba” is not hit or smite but to “go away”. She said when she came upon the verse she could not believe that God would sanction harming another human being except in war. Her translation is due for publication in April. There are at least 20 English translations of the Quran in which the word “daraba” has been translated as “beat, hit, strike, scourge, chastise, flog, make an example of, spank, pet, tap and even seduce”.

According to a report in the New York Times, “When she reached the problematic verse, Ms Bakhtiar spent the next three months on “daraba”. She does not speak Arabic, but she learned to read the holy texts in Arabic while studying and working as a translator in Iran in the 1970s and 80s.

Her eureka moment came on roughly her 10th reading of the Arabic-English Lexicon by Edward William Lane, a 3,064-page volume from the 19th century, she said. Among the six pages of definitions for ‘daraba’ was ‘to go away’. “I said to myself, Oh, God, that is what the prophet meant,” said Ms Bakhtiar, speaking in the offices of Kazi Publications in Chicago, a mail-order house for Islamic books that is publishing her translation. “When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn’t beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?”

“The ‘beat’ translation contradicts another verse, which states that if a woman wants a divorce, she should not be mistreated. Given the option of staying in the marriage and being beaten, or divorcing, women would obviously leave,” she said. There have been similar interpretations, but none have been incorporated into a translation. Debates over translations of the Quran – considered God’s eternal words – revolve around religious tradition and Arabic grammar.

Critics fault Ms Bakhtiar on both scores. Ms Bakhtiar said she expected opposition, not least because she is not an Islamic scholar. Men in the Muslim world, she said, will also oppose the idea of an American, especially a woman, reinterpreting the prevailing translation.

The NYT report said that verse 4:34, with its three-step programme, is often called a reform over the violent practices of seventh century Arabia, when the Quran was revealed. The verse was not a licence for battery, scholars say, with other interpretations defining the heaviest instrument a man might employ as a twig commonly used as a toothbrush. Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Islamic scholar who serves as Egypt’s grand mufti, said Quranic verses must be viewed through the prism of the era. He said, “In our modern context, hitting one’s wife is totally inappropriate as society deems it hateful and it will only serve to sow more discord”.