Author: Manuela Badawy
Publication: Reuters
Date: March 22, 2007
URL: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2007-03-23T002513Z_01_N21290159_RTRUKOC_0_US-KORAN-FEMINIST.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
A new English-language interpretation of the
Muslim Holy book the Koran challenges the use of words that feminists say
have been used to justify the abuse of Islamic women.
The new version, translated by an Iranian-American,
will be published in April and comes after Muslim feminists from around the
world gathered in New York last November and vowed to create the first women's
council to interpret the Koran and make the religion more friendly toward
women.
In the new book, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, a former
lecturer on Islam at the University of Chicago, challenges the translation
of the Arab word "idrib," traditionally translated as "beat,"
which feminists say has been used to justify abuse of women.
"Why choose to interpret the word as
'to beat' when it can also mean 'to go away'," she writes in the introduction
to the new book.
The passage is generally translated: "And
as for those women whose illwill you have reason to fear, admonish them; then
leave them alone in bed; then beat them; and if thereupon they pay you heed,
do not seek to harm them. Behold, God is indeed most high, great!"
Instead, Bakhtiar suggests "Husbands
at that point should submit to God, let God handle it -- go away from them
and let God work His Will instead of a human being inflicting pain and suffering
on another human being in the Name of God."
Some Muslims said the new interpretation strayed
from the original. Omar Abu-Namous, imam at the New York Islamic Cultural
Center Mosque, questioned Bakhtiar's interpretation.
"There is nothing to stop a woman from
translating the Holy Koran. The translator should have good command of the
Arabic language in order to convey it and translate it into other languages.
I don't know if Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar has good command of Arabic," Imam
Abu-Namous said.
"Maybe she is depending on other translations,
not on the original," he said.
BAKHTIAR DEFENDS HER WORK
Bakhtiar defended her work, telling Reuters
she translated from the Arabic text and that she "reads and knows classical
Arabic."
The New York imam also said the passage she
is challenging speaks of when a woman wants a divorce, and only allows a man
to "hit his wife, according to the Prophet, with a 'miswak,'" or
a twig of a pencil's length, on her hand.
Arabic Language Professor at the American
University in Cairo Siham Serry said her interpretation of the word "idrib,"
was "to push away," similar but slightly different from Bakhtiar's
"to go away."
She said she agrees with the imam that 'miswak'
means twig and that the Koran does not encourage the harm of women. But she
also said that men can interpret that passage to justify their own behavior.
"How can you hurt someone by hitting
her with a very small, short and weak thing?" she asked by telephone
from Cairo. "But sometimes the interpretation of the Koran is according
to men, and sometimes they try to humiliate the woman."
Bakhtiar writes in the book that she found
a lack of internal consistency in previous English translations, and found
little attention given to the woman's point of view.
In other changes to the text, she cites the
most accurate translation of the word traditionally translated to mean "infidel"
as "ungrateful."
And she uses "God" instead of "Allah,"
saying that God is the universal English term.
Bakhtiar has been schooled in Sufism which
includes both the Shia and Sunni points of view. As an adult, she lived nine
years in a Shia community in Iran and has lived in a Sunni community in Chicago
for the past 15 years.
"While I understand the positions of
each group, I do not represent any specific one as I find living in America
makes it difficult enough to be a Muslim, much less to choose to follow one
sect or another," she writes.
The new text is published by Islamic specialty
bookseller Kazi Publications, which has a store in Chicago and online.