This paper first provides a critical, historical survey of the English translations of the Quran, namely, those by Alexander Ross (1649), George Sale (1734), J. M. Rodwell (1861), E. H. Palmer (1880), Richard Bell (1937-1939), A. J. Arberry (1955), N. J. Dawood (1956), Alan Jones (2007) and A. J. Droge (2014). This paper draws attention to the unpalatable note of polemics under the pretext of comparative religion in the Oriental-ists’ English translations of the Quran. Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), however, set in motion a new trend in the field: interfaith understanding from the perspective of pluralism. This trend is reflected more sharply in the translations from Thomas Cleary (2004) and Safi Kaskas and David Hungerford (2016). Although in their fairly recent English renderings of the Quran, G. S. Reynolds (2018) and Jane McAuliffe (2017) promise to study the Quran from an interfaith dialogue perspective, they often revert to the polemical Orientalist stance of discrediting the Quran as a poor imitation of the Bible.
Source: Journal of College of Sharia and Islamic Studies
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