faithfully into another language. I quote here the well-known British
Orientalist Professor H.A.R. Gibb, who says in his famous book
Modern Trends in Islam (p.4):
The Koran is essentially untranslatable, in the same way that great
poetry is untranslatable. The seer can never communicate his vision in
ordinary language. He can express himself only in broken images,
every inflection of which, every nuance and subtlety, has to be long
and earnestly studied before their significance breaks upon the reader-
images, too, in which the music of the sounds plays an indefinable part
in attuning the mind of the hearer to receive the message. To
paraphrase them in other words can only be to mutilate them, to
substitute clay for fine gold, the plodding of the pedestrian intelligence
for the winged flight of intuitive perception .... An English translation
of the Koran must employ precise and often arbitrary terms for the
many-faceted and jewel-like phrases of the Arabic; and the more literal
it is, the grayer and more colorless it must be .... Even in so simple a
sentence as
“Verily We give life and death and unto Us is the journeying,” is
impossible to present in English (or perhaps any other language) the
force of the five-times repeated “We” in the six words of the original.
In view of this serious difficulty, the only alternative for me was
to retain the original Qur’anic terms and phrases, and to explain
their meanings in a glossary. These meanings have not been
“invented” by me. They are based upon etymological
considerations and the original meanings of the roots of the
relevant words and phrases; they are supported by authoritative
Arabic lexicons and also by the Qur’anic verses in which they occur.
I have also compiled a comprehensive lexicon of the Qur’an on this
pattern and it has already been published in four volumes. And on
this basis, I have explained the meaning of the Qur’an in a separate
volume. (Both these works are in Urdu and I propose to have at least
the latter, entitled Mafhoom-ul-Qur’an, rendered into English. As a
matter of fact this work is already nearing completion.)*
From a comparative study of deen and madhhab (religion), it would
appear that the two have certain common features; for instance,
faith in God, in Divine Guidance and in the life Hereafter. But this
similarity is not very deep or sufficiently extensive; for if one reflects
over the real meanings of these phrases, it will be abundantly clear
- It now has been published under the title “Exposition of the Holy
Qur’an”. (Editor)
Islam: A Challenge to Religion 16[43:40]