A Lucid Translation of the Quran
By Yoginder Sikand, New Age Islam
New Delhi-based Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is among India’s most well-known religious scholars. He is one of the leading advocates, at the global level, of inter-community understanding and peaceful relations between people of different faiths. Author of some 200 books on various issues related to Islam, the Maulana has come out with a lucid English translation of the Quran. Using simple, easily-understandable modern English, the translation comes with and without the Arabic original, and in different sizes. Additionally, it is available in different digital formats as well as in Braille. It is also published as a hardbound volume, along with the Maulana’s English commentary or Tafseer. The get-up is beautiful, and the quality of printing excellent.
Work on the translation, which began in 2007, took almost two years to complete. In this, the Maulana was assisted by various Islamic scholars and his daughter and translator of several of his books, Farida Khanam. In addition to the English translation, the Maulana has also translated the Quran into Hindi and Urdu.
Numerous translations of the Quran already exist in English, and so what made the Maulana decide to add one more to that number?
“The answer is simple,” says the Maulana. “Many other translations lack clarity, which, according to the Quran (54:17), is the speciality of this Book. My translation is very clear and easily understandable. A research of the various Quran translations in English was undertaken by The Quran Complex, Madinah, Saudi Arabia in which they concluded, ‘In spite of 47 English Quran translations, none has received the acceptance of the modern world.’ The reason of this non-acceptance was that these translations were not in the modern idiom, while my translation is so. In terms of style, it is very simple. Its language is modern. In terms of idiom, it is contemporary. It is free from the interpretations
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