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A liberal Islamic scholar�s dissimulations on the Koran Published on February 13, 2007
Even though the Koran has been described, in the Book itself, as a �clear record�, kitaabin mubeen ( e.g., in XI: 6), which should be easy to understand, many of its individual verses require a great deal of interpretation. An elaborate literature of exegeses, or tafsir, has developed over the centuries, and the process continues today. It is often impossible to understand particular passages of the Book without the �insights� of an exegete. It is not that all interpretations satisfy the reader; in many cases interpretations vary so much that they are in conflict with each other, leaving the reader perplexed. These exegeses can be broadly divided into two classes: literalist and liberal. The modern Muslim is likely to be drawn to the latter rather than the former type of interpretation. Yet, in many cases, even a most liberal interpretation of a passage or a sentence of the Koran can be unsatisfactory to the modern mind. The dissatisfaction increases when the liberal interpretation appears to stretch the meaning. I have called such stretching dissimulation. Abdullah Yusuf Ali is, I believe, among the more liberal of the interpreters of the Koran. His �Holy Qur�an: translation and commentary� is probably more widely read than any other similar publication in English. There is little doubt about his scholarship that includes modern philosophy and western literature. He quotes Shakespeare and Keats at will and does not think it inappropriate to use the word God for Allah. (Zealots have seen to it that later editions of his translation revert to Allah!). He also uses simply �Muhammad� for the Prophet of Islam without the suffix �peace be upon him�, a practice that has become almost an anathema to many orthodox Muslims. Yet in many cases Ali�s translation and interpretation put a gloss on particular expressions in the Koran that is unacceptable at best and misleading at worst. One can sympathize with his concern to be reasonable, modern, or even nice, but there are many instances where his interpretation is hard to accept. In many cases his liberal interpretation amounts to attempt at squaring the circle. There are numerous instances of such dissimulation. The following paragraphs are only illustrative. They demonstrate the difficulty inherent in the Book that only totally blind faith can afford to ignore. They also suggest that if the literalist interpretations of the Koran do often not stand to reason, neither do the liberal exegeses. The treatment of women in the Koran has been among the most contentious issues in Islam today. The Book devotes a whole long sura on women ( Sura Nissa (IV)). But there are many passages in other suras dealing with the subject. In IV: 34 the Koran recommends that husbands beat their disobedient wives. The verse says, clearly: wa adhrebu hunna, meaning: �beat them.� Yusuf Ali, a decent man that he is, adds a qualifying word (�lightly�) to �beat�, making the recommendation: �beat them (lightly)�. By that qualification, he probably wanted to show the Koran in humane light, particularly in view of the many other prescriptions in the Book that highlights the inferior position of women in Islam. But in the process he has twisted the meaning and has served no useful purpose. How many days it took God to create the heavens and the earth, and the consistency between various Koranic positions as well as between these positions and what modern science says on the subject, have been serious bones of contention. Given the overwhelming evidence that the universe is several billion years old, and not a mere few thousand years, Koran�s interpreters have tried to wriggle out of the conundrum by suggesting that God�s �day� should not be measured in the way man measures it. Yusuf Ali too pursues that line of argument. He, moreover, does not see any contradiction in the different measures of the �day� (ranging from 1,000 years in human reckoning in sura Sajdah, XXXII:5, to 50,000 years in sura Ma`arij ( LXX:4). To him these large numbers only mean �very long periods.� (See his notes to XXXII: 4). However, the question that remains is why the �long� periods are measured in so different ways, when a single measure would have been appropriate, and would have made the life of us mortals a little less complicated.. And, while discussing sura Hūd ( XI:7), where God�s throne was on the waters ( presumably because the heavens and the earth were still being created), Yusuf Ali refers to the �scientifically correct� idea that life evolved out of water. But he apparently does not know what to do with this information in the context of the issue being discussed in the Koran, and maintains that the whole notion was only metaphorical. In sura al-Hajj, XXII: 2, we find a horrendous scene of the Day of Judgment when nursing mothers �shall forget her suckling -babe� and �every pregnant female shall drop her load (unformed)�. I have never been able to reconcile the purported mercy of God with this scene, particularly the latter where every pregnant female, pious ones presumably included, suffers miscarriage. Moreover, they have not yet been judged. Why, Merciful God! Surely this is a most ungodly scene. One would be hard put to explain such appalling scenes of human misery and degradation. So is Yusuf Ali. His way out is simply to read the whole verse metaphorically! But surely this is stretching metaphors too far. To remain on the subject of God�s wrath, sura Rūm, XXX:41, reads: � Mischief has appeared on land and sea because of (the meed) that the hands of men have earned, that (God) may give them a taste of some of their deeds: in order that they may turn back (from evil).� In other words, natural calamities are punishment from God. That is the meaning of the sentence in, for example, the well-known Saudi sponsored Bengali translation and interpretation of the Koran by Maulana Muhiuddin Khan. We also hear this every time there is an earthquake of a cyclone. The clear causation seen in the verse, between man�s misdeeds and natural calamities, is turned by Yusuf Ali into this veritable gibberish: �God�s Creation was pure and good in itself. All the mischief or corruption was introduced by Evil, viz., arrogance, selfishness, etc��.As soon as the mischief has come in, God�s mercy and goodness step in to stop it.� He actually has turned the statement of the verse on its head and by �mischief� he means not calamities but man�s corruption. This hardly makes any sense when the verse is read in its entirety. Much dissimulation has been used by Islamic commentators when it cmes to questions relating to the wives of the Prophet of Islam. Yusuf Ali is no exception. It is indeed hard to explain some of the events surrounding some of the wives. Aisha, for example, was only six years old when the Prophet married her and was nine when the marriage was consummated, when he was well over fifty. Yusuf Ali explains (in footnote to XXXIII:28 ( sura Ahjab)) the rationale of the marriages after the death of Khadija. One explanation was that the Prophet needed �help in his duties of leadership, with women, who had to be instructed and kept together in the large Muslim family� Hadhrat Aisha, daughter of Hadhrat Abu Bakr, was clever and learned��. But could this really be the reason for the marriage? Aisha was only six years old at the time! In the same vein, Yusuf Ali puts the best gloss possible over the episode of the Prophet marrying the wife of his adopted son. He makes much of the alleged unhappiness in the conjugal life of Zainab, Zaid�s wife, who also happened to be related to the Prophet. To Yusuf Ali, �it is no part of God�s Plan to torture people in a bond which should be a source of happiness but actually a source of misery.� A number of questions arise here not the least of which are: first, omniscient God could surely have prevented the marriage in the first place; second, could no suitable groom, other than the Prophet, be found in the whole of Arab land for Zainab when she was divorced by Zaid; third, if a father �and- son relationship between a man and his adopted son was such an abomination, why was it not denounced before the sura was revealed? About the last question, in other words, why did it take an event like that of the Prophet marrying Zainab, to trigger a condemnation of the practice of adoption, and not the other way around? You will scant find an answer to such questions in Yusuf Ali, or anywhere else for that matter. Liberal commentators of the Koran are often torn between a desire to come up with an interpretation of its verses that does not subvert common sense and human knowledge accumulated through observation, inquiry and critical thinking on the one hand, and their faith in the Book as the word of God, on the other. This indeed is the basic reason for the many incongruities in their interpretations that worry the modern mind. Here in sura Saaffat (XXXVII), verses 1 through 10, are scenes of angels standing in serried ranks guarding the Exalted Assembly from the evil spirits, and shooting stars pursuing any such spirits who have snatched away something by stealth. Such scenes defy human knowledge and reason. The dilemma for the liberal interpreter is starkly demonstrated by Yusuf Ali�s handling of the scene. The slant of his interpretation in the first few verses of the sura is given by a mixture of mysticism, poetic imagery and spirituality. But the device fails when he comes to verse 10 where he has to accept the shooting star as a physical entity, which raises the obvious question: how does a shooting star repel an evil spirit in the spiritual sense? It would be easy enough, though laborious, to continue with examples of such dissimulation. But, for constraints of time and space, let us end with the final two suras of the Koran. Suras Falaq (CXIII) and Nas ( CXIV) are among the most recited verses of the Book. Among the verses of these suras are supplications to God for protection against �the mischief of those who practise Secret Arts�, or the �mischief of the Whisperer�. To the modern mind, these phenomena themselves would be considered superstition. The irony is that Yusuf Ali considers these verses themselves, as he puts it, �antidote to superstition�! Surely, one does not need an antidote to superstition, such as sorcery, unless he believes in it.
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