Article eight:
On the "New Revised Edition" of Yusuf Ali’s
Quranic Translation — A book review by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
In 1983 Amana printed Yusuf Ali’s outstanding Qur’anic translation and commentary in a nice subsidized hardcover edition. Except for minor changes, it was a reprinting of the classic third edition of Ali’s famous work. The third edition, the last produced during Ali’s lifetime, has been responsible for the conversion of many English speakers to Islam. He was punished for his intense labors for the sake of Islam with persecution. In the L’envoi to his Qur’anic translation and commentary he confided: "I had not imagined that so much human jealousy, misunderstanding, and painful misrepresentation should pursue one who pursues no worldly gain and pretends to no dogmatic authority."
During his life he triumphed over misrepresentation. Now that he is dead, and no longer able to defend himself, however, Amana (1989) has produced a similar-looking, but seriously condensed edition marked "New and Revised." The commentary in this "edition" is not so much revised as censored. The Publisher’s Note places responsibility for the work on anonymous "scholars" and "committees". The only scholar named by the publisher is the late Isma’il al-Faruqi who was assassinated before the book was published, and who, therefore, cannot explain why he acquiesced to such revisions as, for example, the removal of Yusuf Ali’s appendices on the "Allegorical Interpretation of the Story of Joseph," "Mystical Interpretation of the Verse of Light," and "The Muslim Heaven" from the "New Revised Edition." The subsidization of this edition is pricing Ali’s own third edition out of the market. This is not just a matter of underpricing the competition; it is more like a case of "knock-off designer labels." By this method, buyers of what is called "Ali’s" translation and commentary are unwittingly deprived of Ali’s actual work and ideas.
The removal of appendices and evisceration of footnotes are my main objection to this edition. Less draconian among the features which make the "New Revised Edition" a less effective introduction to Islam is the decision to detranslate the word God back into the Arabic Allah. One of Yusuf Ali’s brilliant insights was not to follow Muhammad Pickthall’s precedent of declining to translate the Arabic word Allah into the English word God. Many Arabs and linguists prefer Allah because it cannot be made plural, according to the rules of Arabic grammar. It therefore profoundly symbolizes the unity of God. This subtle linguistic point is lost on the average English speaker reading a Qur’anic translation for the first time. Ali wisely realized that it is more important to drive home the point that Allah is the same God with Whom the reader was already familiar as the God of Abraham and did translate that Arabic word into English. This is a more accessible and powerful lesson on divine unity.
It would have been better had the committee responsible for the "New Revised" edition heeded al-Biruni’s criticism of early translators of Greek texts for transliterating technical terms rather than using Arabic equivalents, thus losing potential readers. The scholars who passed judgment on Yusuf Ali’s commentary should have identified themselves in print, signed their names to their revisions, and made their criticisms openly. When Imam Muslim put out his Hadith compilation, he did not call it the "New revised" edition of Sahih Bukhari! Academic scholarship must be done openly; there is no merit in testing ideas in an academic equivalent of a Star Chamber.
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