Orientalist objective in al-Quran translation
The Traditional Orientalism has adopted a new approach, which is the translation of the Holy Quran. However, this does not mean that it had completely abandoned other approaches of traditional Orientalism namely; study of different Islamic sciences, study of the Holy Quran and Hadith, study of Is...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2015
|
| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/9847/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/9847/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/9847/1/12495-34085-1-SM.pdf |
| Summary: | The Traditional Orientalism has adopted a new approach, which is the translation
of the Holy Quran. However, this does not mean that it had completely abandoned
other approaches of traditional Orientalism namely; study of different Islamic
sciences, study of the Holy Quran and Hadith, study of Islamic Jurisprudence, study
of Islamic history and study of Arabic language and literature. But, the presence of
this approach in the contemporary Orientalism is not new; rather it has adopted the
same method of the traditional Orientalism. Undoubtedly, this approach has a great
influence on the image of Islam in the West. As a result of this misconception, it has
become necessary to conduct a research on the views of Orientalism about Islam,
especially on the Holy Quran being the Holy Book of Muslims. The main focus of
the study is to alert on the secretive resources of Orientalism which aim at fighting
against Islam especially through translation of the Holy Quran. The question to be
answered here is, was the translation of the Holy Quran by the Orientalist a call to
embrace Islam? Or their main motive behind that was to distort the Holy Quran and
to distance the Christians from it? Certainly, understanding the characteristics and
strength of Islam lies on the translation of the Holy Quran. Thus, the translations
were made in order to respond to those issues that are against Christianity in the
Holy Quran. For this reason, this study is of paramount importance as it explains
apparently the major target of Orientalism, i.e. the urgent need to understand the
situation of Muslims; by translating the Quran into European languages by using
great Orientalist in the Arab countries. This research has a number of objectives and
most important amongst them are: responding to the misconception of the Orientalist
and revealing their major motive behind translation of the Holy Quran into different
European languages. The methodologies adopted in this research are: descriptive
and historical approach to examine the text and documents and to classify and
analyze them in order to find the relationship between them. According to the result
of this research, it has been established that European churches have worked towards
strengthening Christianity through allegations and distortions against Islam in order
to keep Christians aloof from Islam. |
|---|