The Enlightenment Qur'an: The Politics of Translation and the Construction of Islam.

• Author: Varisco, Daniel Martin
• Position: Book review

The Enlightenment Qur'an: The Politics of Translation and the Construction of Islam. By ZIAD ELMARSAFY. Oxford: ONEWORLD, 2009. Pp. xiv + 269. $29.95.

How does one translate the Qur'an, a text that Muslims invariably argue can never be fully understood outside of its original Arabic? In this historical genealogy of translations of Islam's holy text into Latin and vernacular Western languages, Elmarsafy begins by noting that such translation has been shaped both by the apologetic thrust of the Western church and "the politics of the sacred within the West itself" (p. ix). The focus of this concise and thorough summary is on the major scholars of the European Enlightenment who either translated or were enthralled with the Qur'an in translation. Rather than providing a comprehensive documentation, the author presents a series of snapshots which take an in-depth view of "the astonishing Sale translation, Rousseau's theory of the legislator, Voltaire's conception of the engaged intellectual, Napoleon's imperial gaze, and Goethe's hesitation between the poetic and the prophetic--in relation to the translation of the Qur'an and the surrounding discourse on the Orient in which it is couched" (p. xii). The result is a welcome contribution to a subject that is more often judged in Whiggish fashion than analyzed in its own intellectual context.

As noted in the first chapter, translation of the Qur'an into Latin served an initial apologetic intent. Peter the Venerable commissioned Robert of Ketton in 1142 c.E. to complete a translation that could be used to convert Muslims out of their heresy by reason rather than by the crusader's sword. The result was a paraphrase with anti-Muslim sentiment rather than an accurate rendition of the Arabic original. By the late fifteenth century a bilingual edition finally appeared, with the Latin and Arabic on facing pages. The invention of the printing press created a dilemma for the Church. On the one hand, approved books could now be more widely distributed, but on the other there was a reluctance to make public a text considered heretical and blasphemous. When Theodor Bibliander published his Latin translation in 1543, it was packaged with a large amount of anti-Muslim propaganda. As Protestants battled Catholics for moral superiority, the Qur'an became "an integral part of polemics within Christianity" (p. 6). Even as the Ottoman Turks were knocking at Vienna's door, Islam became an important foil for denigrating...