Tafsir Quran

Li-qawmin yatafakkarūn (Q.
30:21):
Muhammad Asad’s Qur’anic
Translatorial Habitus
Furzana Bayri
INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR
Introduction
In his analysis of the history of Qur’an translations, Franz Volker Greifenhagen

contends that translators ‘can play many roles’,1 ranging from the ‘parodist, spy, and
conquistador’ to the ‘historian, curator, or text-critic’ on the one hand, or the ‘believing
witness’ or ‘coloniser’ of the target language, ‘accommodationist, apologist, and
reformer’ on the other. Implicit in these designations is the notion that all translations
demonstrate to varying extent the influence of the cultural, social, and ideological
contexts of their agents. In other words, translators in varying measure are conditioned
by, and reflect, their environments. This view has been taken up vigorously in
Translation Studies in recent decades,2 and studies focused on the translator as
a socialised individual have employed sociological concepts such as habitus
(socio-cultural conditioning) and field (environment) as methodological tools in
empirical translation research, yielding interesting new perspectives on the process.3
In the field of Qur’an hermeneutics, however, such methodological tools have not been
applied systematically. The present study comprises an initial attempt to address this
omission, by delineating Muhammad Asad’s habitus against the backdrop of his
socio-political, cultural, and intellectual biographical background in order to explore its
significance and its impact on his The Message of the Qur’an. It will contextualise
Asad’s rendition of the Qur’an into English through comparative critical intertextual
and paratextual analysis, thereby introducing the ‘realm of the sociology of
translation’,4 a Translation Studies perspective, into Qur’anic studies.
Translating the Qur’an into European languages, until very recently, has almost always
been driven by ambivalent motives. Indeed, in Ziad Elmarsafy’s words, Qur’an
Journal of Qur’anic Studies 21.2 (2019): 1–38

Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2019.0380
© Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS
www.euppublishing.com/jqs
2 Journal of Qur’anic Studies
translation is the ‘most political art’.5 Elmarsafy’s maxim holds true for the vast
majority of English Qur’an translations, irrespective of whether the rendition is from
the etic (non-believer’s) or the emic (believer’s) perspective. In fact, emic translations
have added a new dimension to this issue. For while the unquestionable status of the
English language as an international lingua franca is a very significant contributor to
their recent profusion, social factors such as intra-Muslim rivalry, religious,
institutional, and political influences appear to be other important causative elements.6
Moreover, as Stefan Wild has pointed out, a substantial proportion of them ‘share some
important features with postcolonial discourse’.7 In other words, the colonised have
appropriated the coloniser’s language and are writing back, transforming the English
language lexicon in the process. Arguably, this trend provides more grist to the mill,
increasing the relevance of further habitus-oriented investigations of these translations
in a manner akin to the present study.
In this article, Asad’s translation will be contextualised against a number of English

translations which are aimed at a variety of audiences (the general public, believing
Muslims, and Western academics), namely, Marmaduke Pickthall’s The Meaning of
the Glorious Koran (first published in 1930), Arthur J. Arberry’s The Koran
Interpreted (first published in 1955), Muhammad Abdel Haleem’s The Qur’an: A
New Translation (2004), and Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al’s The Study Quran (2015).
Habitus as a Methodological Tool
Before we can begin our analysis, let us first examine what is meant by habitus. Habitus
is the widely accepted Latin translation of hexis, an Aristotelian philosophical notion
that specifies ‘a quality of being or disposition’, a condition that determines the
character or personality of an individual, and is ‘characterized by stability and
permanence’ as opposed to his theory of diathesis, that is a ‘changing disposition’.8
This concept gained currency in the field of sociology in the early twentieth century,
through Norbert Elias’ studies on the historical development of European civilization.9
In examining how society shaped personal characteristics, Elias appropriated the term
habitus to represent ‘embodied social learning’, which in its internalised state
constituted one’s ‘second nature’.10
The contemporary usage of habitus owes much to its further elaboration by Bourdieu,
the renowned French social theorist and anthropologist whose principal concern
was the dynamics of power in the preservation of class structures and the maintenance
of social order in society. He considered habitus to be an embodied system of socially
acquired dispositions and tendencies that become an ingrained, integral part of
behaviour—a ‘second nature’ in an individual, which functions to organise and mediate
the perceptions, actions, and interactions of the said individual within his/her social
environment.11
Li-qawmin yatafakkarūn 3
According to Bourdieu, individuals begin to acquire their habitus in early childhood

through a conditioning process heavily influenced by family, class, nationality,
ethnicity, education, and the wider socio-economic milieu. This subconscious
inculcation process integrates and assimilates personal history and experiences,
personal ideologies and beliefs, to give rise to ‘a structure of the mind, a set of
norms and expectations, sensibilities, dispositions and tastes’.12 Thus habitus
incorporates and reflects the objective social conditions of its indoctrination, and
therefore individuals of the same social class exhibit a similar habitus—which can be
termed a ‘class habitus’.13 Habitus is neither inborn, nor random; it is structured,
unregulated, and involuntary—actions arise from it without premeditation. It is
durable, lasting through one’s lifetime, but adjusts and evolves in response to
changing socio-cultural, economic circumstances, and personal experiences;14 it is
transposable as it ‘generates practices in multiple diverse areas of activity’.15
Thus individuals can possess a mosaic of habituses (class, political, professional,
etc.) and might exhibit a distinctive habitus in one sphere and a different habitus
in another.
Bourdieu’s Field Theory of Sociology links habitus with a number of elements, the
pertinent ones to our discussion here being capital, field, and doxa.16 During the
process of developing habitus, capital is also procured. Bourdieu identifies four
kinds of capital an individual may acquire or be given. These are social (friends,
networks of contacts), cultural (education, knowledge, experience), economic
(money and other material assets), and symbolic (status and recognition). To explain
the social interaction of individual habituses in different spheres of society, Bourdieu
delineated the social spaces of interaction as fields, each field being autonomous
with its own set of rules and its own structures of power relations. Individuals
occupy positions in these fields according to their habitus and specific capital, and act
in that field through the interplay of all these elements in conformity with field-specific
doxa, which is defined as ‘the taken-for-granted of social practice, the seemingly
natural, which we rarely make explicit and which we rarely question’, while general
doxa is ‘the universe of the tacit presuppositions that we accept as the natives of a
certain society’.17
Bourdieu’s sociological concepts of habitus and field have made a momentous

contribution to the paradigmatic ‘sociological turn’ in Translation Studies during the
last decade.18 Appropriation of the theory of habitus has provided powerful
methodological tools, specifically in the field of Descriptive Translation Studies19
bridging the gap between the earlier ‘empiricist-descriptivist’ approaches represented
by Baker and Toury, and the ‘hermeneutic-historical’ approaches advocated by
Lefevere, Basnett, and Tymoczko.20 By foregrounding the role of the translator as an
active ‘socialised/cultural agent’,21 important new insights have been gained into the
construction of public discourses on translations, into the translation process itself,
into the self-image of translators, and into their perceptions and understanding of their
role and function in ‘the production and reproduction of the local/global social order’.22
Simeoni’s suggestion that ‘habitus is the true pivot around which systems of social
order revolve’23 has been acclaimed, whereas his contention that ‘subservience might
be a defining feature, a primordial norm of a translatorial habitus’24 has served as a
challenge to Translation Studies scholars.25 Moreover, Simeoni has designated two
habituses for translators—a ‘habitus long’ and a ‘habitus local’. The former constitutes
the common shared features of translators in a specific field of translation (literary,
commercial, legal, etc.), whereas the latter is the ‘extremely diversified’ specific
individual translator’s habitus—characteristics that might or might not be transposable
into different fields.26
To date, the concept of habitus as a methodological tool has not been applied to English
translations of the Qur’an. Certainly, there is no lack of studies on the linguistic and
stylistic aspects of these translations. The main trend appears to be for comparative
studies utilising a number of different translations,27 or single case studies of particular
translations.28 The primary focus of these studies is on the efficacy or otherwise of the
translation strategies under investigation in rendering the Qur’anic message effectively
and accurately, in essence, a reiteration on the theme of the (un)translatability of the
Qur’an. Having said that, there are a few studies, which do shed some light on the
historical and cultural conceptual underpinnings of English Qur’an translations.
Greifenhagen’s analysis of the history of English translations of the Qur’an is one such
study.29 Two articles in particular, Robinson’s study on Muslim translations of the
Qur’an30 and Iqbal’s article ‘ʿAbdullah Yūsuf ʿAlī & Muḥammad Asad: Two
Approaches to the English Translation of the Qur’an’, are perhaps closer to being
informed by the concept of habitus.
In the current article, I propose to explore Asad’s Qur’anic translatorial habitus against
the background of three interrelated notions, namely capital, field, and doxa, elements
appropriated from the Bourdieusian concept of habitus, taking on board Simeoni’s
stance that the translator’s habitus has a pivotal social status.31 Why choose Asad for
such a study? To begin with, as a European convert to Islam, Asad has a foot in both
camps of the ‘great divide in Qur’ānic studies’—the conflict ‘between traditional
Muslim approaches and Western academic approaches’.32 If Asad is regarded as the
embodiment of a combined emic and etic perspective,33 his translation fits Smith’s
criteria of the best approach for the study of the Qur’an, imparting an ‘insider-outsider’
dynamic which is synergistic.34 An exploration of his habitus would therefore be
particularly interesting, and perhaps illuminating. Furthermore, his translation of the
Qur’an has substantial paratextual material, a detailed foreword, four appendices and
5,371 footnotes. These ‘framing’ texts can be a very informative source of the
translator’s cultural and ideological underpinnings;35 they also ‘control one’s reading of
the text’.36 Moreover, while no biography of Asad is available in English, his memoirs,
other writings, and depictions in numerous articles, conferences, eulogies, and

interviews provide sufficient resources to facilitate exploration of his habitus from a
variety of perspectives.
For the purposes of this study, the inculcation of habitus is conceptualised as involving
three entities, namely, ‘general social culture’ (nationality, ethnicity, and social
culture), ‘ideology and beliefs’ (which includes all types of beliefs), and ‘personal
history’ (family socioeconomic status, education, experiences, etc.). In this context, the
field of English translations is particularly pertinent. Lawrence distinguishes between
the ‘Qur’ān’ (the mus ̣ḥaf) and ‘the Koran’ (the English translation) ‘as an English
stepchild or linguistic equivalent of the original Arabic al-Qur’ān’.37 The ‘Orientalist
Koran’, the ‘South Asian Koran’ and the ‘Virtual Koran’ are manifestations of this
‘English stepchild’ in this field.38
Finally, in this scheme, doxa is considered emblematic of narrative given that doxa, as
‘an unquestioned, self-evident dominant, universal point of view’,39 bears many
similarities with narrative, as defined in the context of Translation Studies as ‘the
principal and inescapable mode by which we experience the world’.40 Within this
framework, four types of narrative are distinguished, namely, ‘ontological’ (the stories
we tell ourselves and others about our place in the world), ‘public’ (stories elaborated
by and circulating among social and institutional groups), ‘conceptual’ (stories
and explanations that scholars/institutions elaborate for themselves and others about
their object of inquiry), and ‘meta’ (narratives in which we are embedded as
contemporary actors in history, the ‘epic dramas of our time’, the prevailing, universal
opinions).41
While all forms of narrative involve some elements of doxa, meta-narratives are
perhaps the most representative of it, and in our context play very significant roles.
Consider the meta-narrative that was the backdrop for Robert of Ketton’s Latin Qur’an
translation, the very first European translation of the Qur’an in 1142 CE.42 The Crusades
were arguably the impetus for this work, which set the precedent for translations of the
Qur’an into various European languages for the following seven to eight centuries. This
Latin translation was printed in 1543 CE against the circumstances of the meta-narrative
of the Ottoman threat.43 The catalyst for the first English translations of the Qur’an by
Muslims in the early twentieth century was, in similar vein, a reaction to the
meta-narrative of British Christian missionary dogma entwined with British
imperialism.44 Finally, while there is no doubt that the high current production rate
of English Qur’an translations owes much to the status of English as an international
lingua franca, the meta-narratives of the twenty-first century, the ‘clash of civilizations’
and ‘the war on terror’, are certainly also instrumental factors. The number of
English-language translations published in the first not quite two decades of the
twenty-first century (a total of 4545) substantiates this impression. Moreover, Sandow
Ideology & Beliefs

General Social Culture Doxa-ontological, public & meta Personal History
narratives
Capital
Social, cultural, economic & symbolic
Internalized “Second
Nature”
Durable Transposable
Dispositions Dispositions
Field
Doxa-conceptual narratives
Generalized Social
Habitus
Political Economic Professional

habitus habitus habitus
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of habitus acquisition,

and its interaction with field, capital, and doxa.
Birk’s ‘American Qur’an’46—an unprecedented, extraordinary, hand-transcribed

English rendition using a few features of traditional Islamic art, with each sura set
against a scene from everyday American life, is a very remarkable expression of the
power of the current meta-narratives/doxa in the field of English translations of
the Qur’an.
Figure 1 above is a schematic representation of the acquisition of habitus, its defining

features and the interplay of capital and field for the manifestation of a variety of
habituses, both general and specific against the backdrop of doxa. While this
diagrammatic representation of habitus is a useful illustrative aid, it should be noted that
the elements portrayed in it are not clear-cut; their boundaries are porous and fluid, and
there is two-directional interplay and intercalation between them, signified by
bidirectional arrows.
Situating Asad’s Translation of the Qur’an
As of 2017, there are over 100 English translations of the Qur’an.47 Factors such as the
overall quality, loss or preservation of semantics, fluency, rhythm, level of reverence,
and the underlying objectives, as well as the target audiences of these translations vary
considerably. While some might be considered better renderings than others, ‘there has
never been, nor can there ever be a single “official” or perfect translation of the
Quran’.48 Accordingly, a number of bio-bibliographic surveys,49 critical/analytical
studies,50 and other works have been produced with the aim of assessing the prolific
number of English translations of the Qur’an.51 There has, as yet, been no formal
analysis of the various categories into which English-language Qur’an translations can
be classified, though, as mentioned above, in his recent biography of English
translations, Bruce Lawrence references an ‘Orientalist Koran’, a ‘South Asian Koran,
a ‘Virtual Koran and a ‘Graphic Koran’.52 However, for the purposes of this study, in
order to contextualise Asad’s rendition and facilitate intertextual and critical textual
analyses, the English translations chosen for comparative purposes have been assigned
to three very different categories: non-Muslim translations, Muslim translations,
and translations by Western converts to Islam. Implicit in this categorisation is the
inference that the respective translators represent types of ‘socialised subjects’,53 and
that their renditions ‘reflect the historical and cultural conditions under which
they have been produced’.54 Arberry’s translation has been assigned to the first
category—representative of translations from the etic perspective, that is, non-Muslim
translations. Abdel Haleem’s translation, a recent widely-accepted version, and Nasr
et al.’s The Study Quran, which provides a wealth of classical exegetical opinions
alongside the target text and contains scholarly articles on germane topics in Qur’anic
Studies, are our representatives in category two—translations by Muslims. Translations
by Western converts to Islam is our third category. Asad’s rendition belongs to this
grouping along with the fourth text in our comparative study—Pickthall’s The Meaning
of the Glorious Koran.55
The portion of the Qur’an selected for this study constitutes suras 2–7 (al-Baqara,
Āl-ʿImrān, al-Nisāʾ, al-Māʾida, al-Anʿām, and al-Aʿrāf), followed by suras 20 and 36
(Ṭā Hā and Yā Sīn), and suras 51–57 (al-Dhāriyāt, al-Ṭūr, al-Najm, al-Qamar,
al-Raḥmān, al-Wāqiʿa, and al-Ḥadīd). This selection, which comprises more than a
third of the source text, is a fair representation of suras designated as Meccan and
Medinan. Moreover, this sampling includes Sūrat al-Baqara, the longest, and perhaps
the most significant chapter of the Qur’an, reportedly referred to as dhirwat al-Qurʾān
(‘the zenith/pinnacle of the Qur’an’).56
i) Muhammad Asad’s Life
Before moving on to discuss Asad’s translation, it is important to address his

biographical milieu, which had a formative influence on his multiple habituses, as a
prelude and framework for the detailed comparative intertextual and paratextual
investigation that follows.
Muhammad Asad was born Leopold Weiss on 12 July 1990 in the small Polish city of
Lemberg (Lvóv, which is in present-day Ukraine) then in Austrian possession as part of
the Habsburg Empire.57 Although his affluent Jewish parents had little religious faith,
the young Leopold was constrained to study the sacred scriptures as though he were
destined for a rabbinical career.58 This meant that from an early age he was fluent in
Hebrew and familiar with Aramaic, having studied the Old Testament in the original.
He was well versed with the Mishnah (the core text, and the Gemara), the analysis and
commentary of both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud, and had ‘immersed
himself in the intricacies of Biblical exegesis, called Targum’.59
Weiss attended the University of Vienna in 1920, where he studied history of art and
philosophy. However, he abandoned his studies and left for Berlin to pursue a
journalistic career even though, at the time, Vienna presented a very stimulating
intellectual and cultural environment. Pioneers such as Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler,
and Ludwig Wittgenstein were formulating original ideas in fields such as
psychoanalysis, philosophy, and language, and these ‘filled the Viennese air, not just
in academic institutions, but even in its cafes, echoing round the world with a
profound, momentous effect on many aspects of life and thought’.60 In Berlin, his
determination to force an entry into the world of journalism paid off through
an ingenious journalistic scoop.61 However, the catastrophe of the Great War, and the
general atmosphere of social, political, and moral insecurity of that time in Central
Europe engendered such a restlessness that when his maternal uncle (one of Freud’s
students), the head of a psychiatric institution in Jerusalem, invited him to visit, he
impulsively left Europe for the Middle East in 1922, where he became a correspondent
for the Frankfurter Zeitung, one of the most prestigious German newspapers at
the time.
Unromantisches Morgenland: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Reise (The Unromantic

Orient: Diary of a Journey),62 Weiss’ first book, published in 1924, is a collection of
his Frankfurter Zeitung dispatches, during this first eighteen-month-long trip to the
East. The book, gives a penetrating, unusual appreciation of the Middle East and
reveals that while Weiss, a vocal anti-Zionist, had fallen in love with the Arabs and
their culture, he was certainly not considering conversion to Islam.63 It was during
his second trip in 1924, as he gained fluency in the Arabic language, that he began
to feel an affinity with Muslim thought.64 He went on to explain how ‘Islam came
over me like a robber who enters a house by night, stealthily, without noise or much
ado: only that, unlike a robber, it entered to remain for good’.65 Indeed, it was only
after travelling ‘[through] the countries between the Libyan Desert and the
snow-covered peaks of the Pamirs, between the Bosporus and the Arabian Sea’,66
and his return to Berlin in 1926, that he converted to Islam, taking the name
Muhammad Asad.67
In Islam he found a religious system that he described as ‘a perfect work of architecture’

and a practical ‘harmoniously balanced’ complete ideology for everyday living.68 In
1927, he returned to Arabia as a correspondent for a number of continental newspapers,
where he spent six of the happiest years of his life, ‘living like an Arab, wearing only
Arab dress, speaking and dreaming in Arabic’.69 He was on intimate terms with King
ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Saʿūd (1291–1373/1875–1953), the founder of modern Saudi Arabia.
He studied Qur’an, ḥadīth, and Islamic history in Mecca and Medina, and travelled
extensively in Arabia on semi-official trips on behalf of the Saudi king, while

continuing to write for the continental newspapers.
In November 1932, while still officially a continental reporter, Asad embarked for India
where he met the thinker and poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. What was intended
to be a short visit of a few months extended to a stay of several long years ‘to help
elucidate the intellectual premises of the future Islamic state which was then hardly
more than a dream in Iqbal’s visionary mind’.70 In the process, the whole tenor
and purpose of his life changed. Convinced that ‘despite all the deficiencies of the
Muslims … Islam was the greatest driving force mankind had ever experienced’, he
metamorphosed into a Muslim intellectual; thinking, lecturing, and writing, taking
the medium of English as his lingua franca, all with a view towards Islam’s
regeneration.71
His writings and lecturing activities were interrupted during the Second World War due
to his detention as an enemy alien. In 1947 he moved to Pakistan upon its creation,
having contributed to and supported its cause. He is rightly considered to be the
intellectual co-founder of Pakistan, and was the first citizen to be issued a Pakistani
passport.72 He held a number of departmental and diplomatic positions within the
government and, in 1951, returned to the West after a twenty-two-year absence, as
Pakistan’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Nations in New York. He resigned
this position in 1952, and began the third phase of his life, heralded by the
unprecedented success of his ingenious and literary, autobiographical book The Road
to Mecca,73 which has been variously described as ‘an impressionistic self-portrait’,74
and ‘an elegant admixture of fact and fiction’.75
Oscillating between Europe (Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Gibraltar, and Spain)

and the Muslim world (Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco), very
much in demand as a charismatic and influential speaker and an authority on Islamic
social and political theory, he continued his writings,76 finally culminating in his
masterpiece The Message of the Qur’an: Translation and Commentary, published after
a seventeen-year effort in 1980. Asad, ‘a Bedouin at heart’ had been settled in Tangiers
for nineteen years during this period.77 He later moved to Spain where he died, aged 91,
on 20 February 1992, and is buried in the Muslim cemetery in Granada: his career can
‘be said to have paralleled the emergence of every trend in contemporary Islam’.78
ii) An Overview of Asad’s Translation: ‘The Message of the Qur’an’
Lawrence places Asad’s rendition within his ‘South Asian Koran’ grouping,79 along
with other translators from the Indian subcontinent who produced their translations
during the early to mid twentieth century and for whom both English and Arabic were
second or third languages. The present study describes his translation differently,
based on his habitus rather than on his exceptional competence in both languages.
Certainly, Asad had already established his reputation as an English writer when he
undertook his translation of the Qur’an. As for Arabic, not only was he proficient in the
language, but he had also steeped himself in the traditional curricula of the Islamic
scholar. Asad’s extreme admiration of the Arabic language is uncategorical: he
contends that the desert land of its origin confers ‘a quick-wittedness on its people’
such that their language is very marked in its flexibility; it is ‘extraordinarily rich in
vocabulary’, it ‘vaults elliptically’ with an unmatched beauty, incision and concision,
differing from other languages in terms of its ‘spirit and life-sense’.80 For a polyglot
like Asad, in view of his abounding knowledge of Eastern (Arabic, Persian, Urdu) and
Western (German, Polish, English) languages, and early familiarity with ancient
languages (Aramaic and Hebrew) such a stance towards Arabic is very illuminating.
Asad maintained that his thorough academic knowledge of classical Arabic, reinforced
by his experience of living closely and intimately among the bedouin of central
and eastern Arabia during the early twentieth century ‘whose daily speech mirrors the
genuine spirit of their language’ and who have held on to ‘the idiom of the Prophet’s
time, preserving all its intrinsic characteristics’,81 gave him a unique, unprecedented
advantage in giving ‘a really idiomatic, explanatory rendition of the Qur’ānic message’
in English,82 compared to all other translators of this text. His ‘explanatory rendition’ is
not a straightforward translation, neither is it an annotated interpretation, nor an
exegetic exposition, but a composite of all three, embedded with copious notes and
references to classical exegetes in the tradition of conventional tafsīrs.
For Asad, the Qur’an is ‘the ultimate manifestation of God’s grace to man’.83 It is the
only sacred text that insists on the indissolubility of the spiritual, physical, and material
aspects of human life and asserts the dominance of ‘reason as a valid way to faith’:84
tellingly he dedicated his translation to qawmin yataffakarūn (‘people who
think/reason’). He contends that his rendition is grounded in two fundamental rules.
Firstly, the Qur’an has to be regarded as one integral whole, the lexical and semantic
meanings explained through frequent cross-referencing, on the basis that ‘the Qur’ān is
its own best commentary’.85 Secondly, the historical references within the Text should
be regarded as ‘illustrations of the human condition’ and utilised to elucidate the
‘underlying purport’ of the semantic meaning and ‘its relevance to the ethical teaching
of the Qur’ān’.86 That he venerates the Qur’an, ‘a book which more than any other
single phenomenon known to us has fundamentally affected the religious, social and
political history of the world’87 is self-evident in the overall mode, tenor, and tone of his
translation. He adheres much more closely to the Arabic syntax and grammar than the
other four renditions in our study, scrupulously bracketing target text additions required
for the explication of elliptical phraseology. For these reasons, his translation, while
fluent, is somewhat cumbersome with ‘foreignised’ elements. Moreover, his paratextual
material is indispensable and significantly enhances the transmission of the
extralinguistic elements of the source text. The footnotes abound with referential
content, adding allusive and expressive meanings and socio-cultural and historical
imprints, and, accordingly, enrich the operative and vocative characteristics of the target
text. Overall, Asad’s is a sapiential, didactic, anagogical rendering and could
imaginatively be considered reflexive of his view of Islam as ‘a perfect work of
architecture, all parts harmoniously conceived to complement and support each
other … nothing superfluous and nothing lacking’ having ‘absolute balance and solid
composure’.88
Textual Analysis
This section describes the comparative empirical analyses of Asad’s rendition against
the four designated translations, aimed at identifiying lexical, semantic, syntactic,
grammatical, or other differences, followed by a critical examination of Asad’s
paratextual material. The material will be assessed for metaphorical, connotative,
allusive, expressive or other meanings, nuances, and tones, all with a view to
distinguishing the impressions of particular aspects of his habituses and the prevailing
doxa in his target text.
i) Comparative Intertextual Analysis of Lexical Choices
Detailed comparative textual analyses of the portion of the source text selected for this
study reveal a number of features such as lexical choices, interpretation of metaphorical
expressions, and metonymical usages, that are conspicuous in Asad’s translation.
To begin with, the frequently recurring expression yā-ayyuhā’lladhīna āmanū
(e.g. Q. 2:153) translated literally as ‘O you who believe’ (Pickthall and The Study
Quran) or idiomatically as a single lexical ‘believers’ (Abdel Haleem, and Arberry) is
rendered markedly different by Asad as ‘O you who have attained to faith’. The use of
‘attain’ is suggestive of an intentional, dynamic action, an accomplishment, whereas
‘believe’ has submissive, passive undertones. In addition, the choice of the lexical
‘faith’ in place of ‘believe’ is finely nuanced, hinting perhaps at Biblical antecedence.
It might be argued that Asad wants to illustrate one of his most valued Islamic beliefs,
the pre-eminence of man’s reason and free will. Essentially, the decision to believe has
to be deliberate and purposeful, based on reason.
As for the root form of the source text lexical kafara, in the non-theological context it
carries the general meaning ‘to conceal’ or ‘to cover’ something. Toshihiko Izutsu,
in his detailed study on the semantic structure and semantic field of its infinitive, kufr
(an important recurrent Qur’anic theme), as an ethico-religious concept,89 has
demonstrated how this term in its various derivations takes on the semantics
of ‘ingratitude’ or ‘disbelief’. In the context of verses describing God’s favours,
kufr / kufūr / kufrān is construed as denial or ‘ingratitude’ (e.g. Q. 29:66 and
Q. 16:112).90 However, in verses dealing with the ‘rejection of faith’ in God, kafarū /
yakfurū takes on the meaning ‘to disblieve’ (e.g. Q. 2:89 and Q. 3:90).91
The verses mentioned by Izutsu that take the semantics of ‘ingratitude’ are rendered
likewise by the other translators, including Asad, with the sole exception of Pickthall,
but these are not the focus of the present study. Rather, the context in which the term
kafarū operates as a precise antonym of āmanū is of particular relevance. In this setting,
(given that both are third person plural past tense) kafarū is translated antonymically;
literally as ‘those who disbelieve’ as opposed to ‘those who believe’ (Pickthall and The
Study Quran) or idiomatically as ‘disbelievers’ (Abdel Haleem) or ‘unbelievers’
(Arberry) as opposed to ‘believers’. However, just as Asad’s rendition of āmanū is
significantly different, so too is his translation of the expression kafarū in this context.
Taking the original semantics of kafara (‘to conceal’ or ‘to cover’ something), he
contends that the ‘something’ that is ‘concealed’ or ‘covered’ is the ‘truth—in the
widest spiritual sense’. It could be the suppression of ‘the supreme truth—namely, the
existence of God’ (the highest form of ‘ingratitude’ according to Izutsu)92 or it could be
a reference to a cover-up of some scriptural ‘doctrine’ or decree, or the rejection of
some ‘self-evident moral proposition’, or ingratitude for ‘favours received’.93 In other
words, kafara denotes ‘a denial’ of any one of the aforementioned truths. Based on this
rationale, Asad translates kafarū as ‘those who are bent on denying the truth’, the
additional target text lexical ‘bent’ imparting an allusive expressive meaning of
‘deliberate intent’ to the ‘denial’. Indeed, Asad’s interpretation is akin to that of a
number of classical exegetes. In this instance, he appears to have been influenced
particularly by al-Zamakhsharī’s exegetical view, for in his explication of kafarū in
Q. 2:6, al-Zamakhsharī refers to ‘those who have deliberately resolved on their kufr’.94
Clearly, Asad does not regard disbelief as the reflexive default of the absence of belief.
Rather, it is a purposeful and insistent denial of the aforementioned spiritual and moral
‘truths’ that, according to him, are the essential prerequisites for a fulfilling and
purposeful existence. Interestingly, the juxtaposition of Asad’s renditions of
yā-ayyuhā’lladhīna āmanū and kafarū—‘O you who have attained to faith’ contrasted
against ‘those who are bent on denying the truth’—gives a provocative image of two
determinedly antithetical groups, and an illustration of a somewhat epistemological
rendition that perhaps Asad utilises intuitively to validate and justify his theological and
philosophical beliefs.
Another noteworthy characteristic of Asad’s translation is his usage of pronouns such

as ‘thee’, ‘thou’, and ‘thy’, and modal or auxiliary verbs such as ‘shalt’, ‘dost’, ‘hast’,
‘doest’, ‘knowest’, ‘wilt’, a style reminiscent of the King James Bible. Interestingly,
while these expressions are absent in The Study Quran and Abdel Haleem’s translation,
both Pickthall’s and Arberry’s renditions abound with this terminology, raising
penetrating questions regarding the effect of a Judeo-Christian class habitus on
Qur’anic translatorial habituses.
Furthermore, Asad displays an idiosyncratic propensity in the choice of target text

lexicals for certain source text scriptural nouns. For instance, rabb has been rendered
as ‘Lord’ in all of the translations on the basis that its semantic English equivalent
is ‘master’, ‘one possessed with authority’.95 Asad, however, explains in his
footnotes that rabb ‘embraces a wide complex of meanings’,96 and denotes not only
proprietorship and authority, but also the ‘rearing, fostering and sustaining of anything
from its inception to its final completion’,97 in this case the human being. For this
reason, he considers ‘Sustainer’ better reflects the connotative and allusive meaning of
rabb. The only instance of ‘Sustainer’ in the other renditions is in Pickthall’s
translation, in his literal rendering of rāziq as ‘Sustainer (whereas Asad uses ‘Provider’
in this case, see Q. 5:114). A second example is rasūl, which is translated as
‘messenger’ without exception in all the other translations. Asad, however, utilises
‘apostle’ in every instance, whether rasūl refers to Muḥammad or any other prophet.
Yet a third nominal choice is even more striking: his rendering of salām (literal
meaning ‘peace’) in the collocation subula’l-salām (Q. 5:16).98 When translating this
term, Arberry, Abdel Haleem, and The Study Quran all choose ‘ways of peace’, while
Pickthall’s preference is ‘paths of peace’. Asad however, translates the collocation as
‘paths leading to salvation’, even though he translates salām (and its derivatives in at
least nineteen further instances) in other contexts as ‘peace’. It is noteworthy that he
emphasises that this choice is imposed on him for want of a more appropriate target
text expression as he considers salām in this context to denote much more than peace;
rather ‘soundness and security from evil of any kind … spiritual peace and
fulfillment’.99 Moreover, he is categorical in dissociating salām from the connotative
and allusive semantics of ‘salvation’, an expression that evokes a potent, unambiguous
association with the Christian concepts of original sin and redemption through the
sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, doctrines he repeatedly refutes
paratextually.100
An instance of a verbal lexical that Asad portrays in a distinctive ‘Asadian’ manner is

atā, a polysemic and polyvalent verb meaning ‘to bring forward’, ‘to come/arrive’,
or ‘to give’ or ‘offer’. Asad’s interpretation of this verb in its various derivations
is contextualised: it is ‘vouchsafe’ in the context of the bestowal of divine scriptures,
but takes the semantic meaning ‘to bring forward’ or ‘offer’ in other circumstances.
For instance, in the phrase … fa-sawfa yaʾti’llāhu bi-qawmin yuḥibbuhum
wa-yuḥibbūnahu … (Q. 5:54), the verb yaʾti is rendered by Asad as ‘bring forth’.101
Pickthall’s choice of ‘vouchsafe’ on the other hand, is not in the context of scripture,
(with one single exception out of fourteen instances) and therefore does not carry
the connotative or allusive meaning that is implicit in Asad’s usage, that is,
the ‘granting of a divine gift’ (see Q. 17:85).102 (For the single exception in
Pickthall’s usage where ‘vouchsafe’ is utilised in the scripture frame of reference,
see Q. 3:84).103 The source text verb nas ̣ara (and its nominal derivatives) is
another example where Asad’s target text lexical choice is suggestive of
connotative and allusive undertones. The majority of translators opt for ‘to help’ and
‘help’ in their renditions of this term. Asad however, chooses ‘to succour’ and
‘succour’.
Interestingly, Asad’s lexical predilection in most of the cases mentioned above is

significantly redolent of Biblical style. Indeed, ‘apostle’ has a very narrow Biblical
meaning, specifically with reference to the disciples of Jesus—his emissaries, for
example in Corinthians 9:2. An example of the term ‘Sustainer’ is found in Psalm 54:4,
whereas samples of ‘vouchsafe’ and ‘succour’ are found in Ruth 2:10 and Hebrews
2:18 respectively.104 This Asadian tendency is apparent in other lexical selections. The
source text term khalīfa is a derivative of the triconsonantal verb khalafa meaning ‘to be
the successor’.105 Pickthall and Arberry both render it as ‘viceroy’, The Study Qur’an
as ‘vicegerent’, and Abdel Haleem as ‘successor’ (Q. 2:30)106. Asad, however,
expresses is as ‘one who shall inherit’ the Earth, conjuring up the Biblical text of
Matthew 5:5 in the New Testament.107 Moreover, he adheres to the conceptual meaning
of this expression in other contexts (e.g. Q. 6:165, Q. 27:62, and Q. 35:39), whereas
Pickthall’s, Arberry’s, and Abdel Haleem’s renditions are not all the same, but are
contextualised.
In contrast, his rendition of the lexical nafs as ‘human being’ or ‘living entity’ in a very
significant number of verses where it is translated as ‘soul’ by all the other translators
attests to his determination to avoid the target text lexical ‘soul’ with all its Biblical
connotative and allusive meanings and controversies (see Q. 2;48, Q. 2:123, Q. 2:281,
Q. 3:145, Q. 3:185, and Q. 4:1). There are rare instances where Abdel Haleem and
Pickthall also choose ‘person’ or ‘human being’ respectively, due to the context (for
example in their translations of Q. 5:32108), whereas Asad invariably prefers the latter
or ‘self’ or ‘living entity’ for almost all instances of nafs and its grammatical
derivatives. However, there are two noteworthy exceptions, Q. 5:30 and Q. 5:80. Let us
consider Q. 5:30, which is particularly edifying:109
fa-ṭawwaʿat lahu nafsuhu qatla akhīhi fa-qatalahu fa-aṣbaḥa min

al-khāsirīn
But the other’s passion (nafs) drove him to slaying his brother; and he
slew him: and thus he became one of the lost.
Asad’s rendition of nafs as ‘passion’ in this case is unprecedented. Compare this to

Abdel Haleem’s, Arberry’s, and The Study Quran’s versions of the first half of the
verse, which are identical:
But his soul (nafs) prompted him to kill his brother…
Since ‘desire’, ‘inclination’, or ‘appetite’ are among the other meanings attributable to
the noun nafs, Asad’s selection cannot be criticised: rather it is perhaps apposite.
Indeed, his version conveys a much more plausible impression, a frenzied, manic action
that results in the self-condemning heinous crime of fratricide, as opposed to the image
of an impassive, premeditated killing imparted by ‘his soul prompted’. Moreover, while
it serves to accentuate his compelling proficiency of subtle nuances in the source text,
it also points to al-Zamakhsharī’s unmistakable lexicographic influence on Asad.
For, as Asad himself points out, al-Zamakhsharī’s Asās al-balāgha attributes the
meaning of ‘passionate determination’ to nafs.110
There are other instances of differences in lexical choices between Asad and the other
translators which arguably heighten the vocative and persuasive characteristics of his
translation. One such example is his rendering of the adjurative particle wa- (present in
the first verse[s] of many of the short Meccan chapters, e.g. Q. 79, Q. 85, Q. 86, Q.89,
Q. 91, Q. 92, Q. 93, Q. 95, and Q. 103) as ‘Consider’ whereas all the other translators
present it as a solemn oath-like assertion, ‘By …’, as a call to witness. Asad’s choice
accords with his view of the pre-eminence of man’s reason and free will, ‘God-given
faculties’ that should be exercised for contemplation. The wa- is a prompt that instigates
this reflective process, that urges us to ‘consider’ natural phenomenon in particular, in
order to authenticate the truth of the Qur’anic message. A second example can be found
in his translation of t ̣āghūt, a nominal derivative of the verb t ̣āgha meaning ‘to overstep
boundaries’, or ‘to rebel’. In the eight instances that the lexical t ̣āghūt is found in the
Qur’an, the other translators consistently render it as ‘idols’ or ‘false deities/gods’
(albeit with three exceptions in the case of Abdel Haleem, who contends that t ̣āghūt
has a ‘multitude of meanings’111 and translates it as ‘idols and evil powers’ [Q. 4:51],
‘unjust tyrant’ [Q. 4:60] and ‘unjust cause’ [Q. 4:76] respectively). Asad however,
in all cases renders t ̣āghūt as ‘the powers of evil’, an inclusive term which endorses his
rationalistic view that ‘powers of evil’ represent repressive or exploitative ideologies,
oppressive regimes, despotic authoritarian people, or anything tyrannical.
ii) Allegorical Interpretations
Another striking feature of Asad’s interpretation is the way that his paratexts serve to
invest certain expressions and phrases with a metaphorical and/or allegorical inference.
Asad regards imagery and allegory in the Qur’an as having both a metaphysical and a
psychological function.112 For instance, given that man’s perception, imagination, and
experience is limited to his five senses, how can he understand the metaphysical
Qur’anic concept al-ghayb, which he interprets as ‘the realm beyond the reach of
human perception’ (all the other translators render it as ‘the unseen’)? Asad goes on to
explain that since al-ghayb can never be experienced, the use of psychological
‘loan-images derived from one’s actual experiences—physical or mental’ presented in
the form of a parable or allegory is one possible way of rendering its meaning.113
Witness his explanation of the parable mentioned in Q. 2:17–20:
Mathaluhum ka-mathali’lladhī’stawqada nāran fa-lammā aḍāʾat mā

ḥawlahu dhahaba’llāhu bi-nūrihim wa-tarakahum fī ẓulumātin lā
yubs ̣irūna s ̣ummun bukmun ʿumyun fa-hum lā yarjiʿūna aw ka-ṣayyibin

mina’l-samāʾi fīhi ẓulumātun wa-raʿdun wa-barqun yajʿalūna
as ̣ābiʿahum fī ādhānihim mina’l-ṣawāʿiqi ḥadhara’l-mawti wa’llāhu
muhīt ̣un bi’l-kāfirīn yakādu al-barqu yakht ̣afu abs ̣ārahum kullamā
aḍāʾa lahum mashaw fīhi wa-idhā aẓlama ʿalayhim qāmū wa-law
shāʾa’llāhu la-dhahaba bi-ṣamʿihim wa-abṣārihim inna’llāha ʿalā
kulli shayin qadīr.
Their parable is that of people who kindle a fire: but as soon as it has
illumined all around them, God takes away their light and leaves them
in utter darkness, wherein they cannot see: deaf, dumb, blind—and they
cannot turn back. Or (the parable) of a violent cloudburst in the sky,
with utter darkness, thunder and lightning: they put their fingers
into their ears to keep out the peals of thunder, in terror of death;
but God encompasses (with His might) all who deny the truth.
The lightning well nigh takes away their sight; whenever it gives them
light, they advance therein, and whenever darkness falls around
them, they stand still. And if God so willed, He could indeed take away
their hearing and their sight, for verily, God has the power to
will anything.
The source text is rendered comparably (with a few minor differences) by all of
the translators. However, Asad explicates in an accompanying footnote that the
‘people who kindle a fire’ represent individuals who rely solely on a scientific
explanation to ‘illumine the imponderables of life and faith’, and the phrase ‘their
hearing and their sight’ is a ‘metonym’ for ‘man’s moral responsibility’; therefore
‘deaf, dumb, and blind’ signify moral insensitivity. Such an approach engenders an
egotistical confidence in man’s intellect. This arrogant attitude and lack of
personal moral responsibility leads to ‘the lightning that almost snatches away their
sight’—that is ‘the lightning of disillusion’—and this condition ‘weakens their moral
perception and deepens their ‘terror of death’.114 The Study Quran, as befits an
exegetically embedded interpretation, also draws a similar inference that ‘deaf,
dumb, and blind’ is a reference to ‘spiritual insensibility’.115 Asad’s interpretation
however, is much more imaginative and figurative, with philosophical/psychological
connotations.
iii) Semantic Divergence
The next example, verse 33 of Sūrat al-Māʾida, is an instance where Asad’s proclivity
for emphasising the metonymical aspects of words and expressions radically alters the
semantic meaning of the source text. The major differences between his and the other
renditions are underlined in Table 1 below:
Q. 5:33 Innamā jazāʾū’lladhīna yuḥāribūna’llāha wa-rasūlahu

wa-yasʿawna fī’l-arḍi fasādan an yuqqatalū aw yus ̣allabū aw
tuqat ̣ṭaʿa aydīhim wa-arjuluhum min khilāfin aw yunfaw min
al-arḍi dhālika lahum khizyun fī’l-dunyā wa-lahum fī’l-ākhirati
ʿadhābun ʿaẓīm
Asad It is but a just recompense for those who make war on God and His
apostle, and endeavor to spread corruption on earth, that they are
being slain in great numbers, or crucified in great numbers, or
have, in result of their perverseness, their hands and feet cut off in
great numbers, or are being [entirely] banished from [the face of ]
the earth: such is their ignominy in this world. But in the life to
come [yet more] awesome suffering awaits them.
Abdel Those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to
Haleem spread corruption on the land should be punished by death,
crucifixion, the amputation of an alternate hand and foot, or
banishment from the land: a disgrace for them in this world, and
then a terrible punishment in the Hereafter.
Arberry This is the recompense of those who fight against God and His
Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they
shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall
alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land.
That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to
come awaits them a mighty chastisement
Pickthall The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His
messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they
will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on
alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will
be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will
be an awful doom
Study Quran Verily the recompense of those who wage war against God and His
messenger and endeavor to work corruption upon the earth is that
they be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off
from opposite sides, or be banished from the land. That is their
disgrace in this world, and in the Hereafter theirs shall be a great
punishment.
Table 1. Source Text of Q. 5:33 and Respective Translations.
The lexical jazāʾū is rendered as ‘just recompense’ in Asad’s more literal version with
the present tense verbs yuqattalū, yus ̣allabū, tuqat ̣ṭaʿa, and yunfaw as ‘are being slain
in great numbers’, ‘crucified in great numbers’, ‘cut off in great numbers’, and
‘banished’ respectively. In contrast, Abdel Haleems’s rendition is more idiomatic:
jazāʾū takes the contextual lexical ‘be punished’ with the modal verb ‘should’
preceding and the consequential class shifts (verbs transformed into nouns) to ‘death’,
‘crucifixion’, ‘amputation’, and ‘banishment’. His version is clear-cut semantically: for
him the verse is a description of the prescribed penalties for the crimes of ‘waging war
… and spreading corruption’, and this interpretation is very much in line with the views
of classical commentators. According to al-Qurṭūbī, for instance, this verse is a legal
injunction; it comprises one of the five Qur’anic ḥadd punishments, that is divinely
ordained capital punishments for very grave crimes such as murder, theft, attacking and
terrorising individuals, or destabilising the moral fabric of the Islamic community.116
The other three translators’ renditions (Pickthall, Arberry, and The Study Quran) do not
undergo a class shift, but are also unambiguous in giving the same meaning.
Asad, however, ‘categorically rejects’ the notion that this verse is a legal injunction.
Furthermore, he renders the phrase min khilāfin metaphorically, as opposed to the other
renditions which opt to translate it in a literal sense, as ‘from opposite/alternate sides’.
To do this, he draws on the meaning of the third form of the root verb khalafa
(i.e. khālafa) which also has the meaning ‘to oppose’ or ‘to be contrary’117 and,
accordingly, translates min khilāf as ‘in result of their perverseness’. Consequently,
there is a degree of ambiguity in his translation: ‘those who make war … are being
slain … in result of their perverseness …’ The question is by whom? The answer lies in
his quite lengthy paratextual explanation. The pertinent point to this discussion is his
rendition of the verbs yuqattalū (‘slaying’), yus ̣allabū (‘crucifying’), and tuqat ̣ṭaʿa
(‘cutting’) as present progressive passive tense as ‘are being slain … crucified … cut’
(qualified by the addition of ‘great numbers’ to denote the connotative semantics of
the source text verbs which are form II, signifying intensive action), as opposed to
the preference of Pickthall, Arberry, and The Study Quran for ‘will be killed …
crucified … cut’, or ‘shall be slaughtered … crucified … cut’, or ‘be killed …
crucified … cut’ respectively. Asad contends that the verse read in this manner, presents
a ‘statement of fact’, in other words ‘those who make war on God’ cannot evade the
‘retribution’ they bring upon themselves. Their immorality, unrestrained greed for
‘worldly gain and power’ and their ‘perverseness’ (min khilāfin) causes unrelenting
rivalry, such that ‘they kill one another in great numbers, torture and mutilate one
another in great numbers’, leading to the extermination of entire communities.118
Interestingly, Asad’s rendition might arguably appear to presage images of some
twenty-first century public and meta-narratives. Indeed, in this context can it be read as
significant that he mentions that ‘cutting of one’s hands and feet’ in classical Arabic
idiom is metonymical for ‘destroying one’s power’, i.e. ‘regime change’?119
iv) Ideological Interpretations
Asad’s ideological stance, his rejection of both the Jewish doctrine that the Jews are
‘God’s chosen people’ and the Christian creed of ‘original sin’, ‘vicarious atonement’,
and redemption through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, is evident in his
interpretation of certain verses. One such example is Q. 3:187:
Wa-idh akhadha’llāhu mīthāqa’lladhīna ūtū’l-kitāba la-tubayyinunnahu

li’l-nāsi wa-lā taktumūnahu fa-nabadhūhu wa-rāʾa ẓuhūrihim
wa’shtaraw bihi thamanan qalīlan fa-biʾsa mā yashtarūn.
And Lo, God accepted a solemn pledge from those who were granted
earlier revelation [when He bade them]: ‘Make it known unto mankind,
and do not conceal it!’ But they cast this [ pledge] behind their
backs, and bartered it away for a trifling gain: and how evil was their
bargain!
The source text collocation thamanan qalīlan (literally ‘price small’) is rendered as
‘small price’ by Abdel Haleem and Arberry, ‘paltry price’ by The Study Quran, ‘little
gain’ by Pickthall, and ‘trifling gain’ by Asad. In his explanatory paratexts, Asad
implicates this ‘trifling gain’ in the case of the Jews to be their ‘conviction that they are
God’s chosen people’, and in the case of the Christians, their belief in Jesus’ ‘vicarious
atonement’; both groups, he says, are under the illusion that they have entered into a
bargain that grants them ‘immunity in the life to come’.120 In the portion of the
Qur’anic text analysed for this study, there are many instances where he insinuates
inferences to one or both dogmas in certain verses, while the semantics of the text does
not support these notions (see Q. 2:47, Q. 2:62, Q. 2:79, Q. 2:80, Q. 2:94, Q. 2:124,
Q. 2:134, Q. 3:111, Q. 3:187, Q. 4:49, Q. 4:50, Q. 4:53, Q. 5:44, and Q. 7:169).
Notably, all of these verses, or the verse(s) preceding them, contain the source text
collocations Banū Isrāʾīl (‘the Children of Israel’) or ahl al-kitāb (‘the People of the
Book’), referenced above as ‘those who were granted earlier revelation’. According to
the majority of classical commentators, the latter designation is an allusion to Jews and
Christians. It seems fair to conclude that Asad exploits these verses and their contexts to
support his strong ideological imprint, his categorical rejection of Jewish and Christian
beliefs. Given the context and the number of these verses, it is remarkable that no other
translator/interpreter or exegete makes any reference, implied or otherwise, to ‘God’s
chosen people’ or ‘vicarious atonement’ in even one single instance. Undoubtedly,
Asad’s predilection for such paratextual inferences raises a number of questions, the
paramount one being: what is his purpose? Perhaps consideration of Q. 2:134 might be
useful in this respect:
Tilka ummatun qad khalat lahā mā kasabat wa-lakum mā kasabtum

wa-lā tusʾalūna ʿammā kānū yaʿmalūn.
Now those people have passed away; unto them shall be accounted
what they have earned. And unto you, what you have earned; and you
will not be judged on the strength of what they did.
Asad utilises the above verse to emphasise the ‘fundamental Islamic tenet of individual
responsibility’ in order to differentiate it decisively from the Jewish notion of ‘God’s
chosen people’ and the Christian creed of ‘vicarious atonement’. According to the
Qur’an, no human being carries the burden of ‘original sin’, nor is any individual
‘chosen’ and therefore exempt from the burden of his own sins. The Qur’anic stance
in Asad’s view, unambiguously stands out as egalitarian, cogent, and rational.
Indeed, in the exposition of all of the aforementioned verses, Asad constantly
conjures comparisons with the Qur’an, which he contends, has a ‘rational approach …
to all religious questions’121 and therefore appeals to those who use ‘reason as a valid
way to faith’,122 ideas that resonate well with twentieth- and twenty-first century
audiences.
Certainly, Asad’s manifest goal is ‘to bring the Qur’ān nearer to the hearts and minds’
of non-Muslims, in particular to a Western audience.123 Given the formative influence
of his early twentieth-century European cultural and intellectual milieu and the
backdrop of the relevant meta- and conceptual narratives (‘the age of reason’, ‘the era of
science’, etc.), combined with his thorough knowledge and familiarity with ‘books of
earlier revelation’, his scheme for this quest is not only comprehensible but, perhaps,
predictable. His insistent focus on religious notions such as ‘original sin’, miracles, and
myths that were being seriously undermined at the time, combined with his
‘rationalistic’ approach to the Qur’an, appear as strategies targeted specifically
towards a Judeo-Christian Western audience. Indeed, there are instances where he
mobilises his paratexts to address the prevailing Judeo-Christian attitude to Islam.
Consider his commentary on Q. 3:99:
Qul yā ahla’l-kitābi lima tas ̣uddūna ʿan sabīli’llāhi man āmana

tabghūnahā ʿiwajan wa-antum shuhadāʾu wa-mā’llāhu bi-ghāfilin
ʿammā taʿmalūn.
Say: ‘O followers of earlier revelation! Why do you [endeavour to]

bar those who have come to believe [in this divine writ] from the path
of God by trying to make it appear crooked, when you yourselves
bear witness [to its being straight]?’ For, God is not unaware of what
you do.
Asad uses this verse, among others, to refute the notions current in the West at the time,
that Muḥammad ‘composed’ the Qur’an himself, falsely attributing it to Divine
revelation124 or that he had ‘borrowed the main ideas of the Qur’ān from the Bible’,
viewing the Qur’an as a ‘concocted’, distorted version—an ‘ersatz Bible’.125
Asad’s firm conviction of Islam as a well-balanced and complete way of life for all times
is further reflected in his interpretations of a number of other verses, such as Q. 2:218:
Inna’lladhīna āmanū wa’lladhīna hājarū wa-jāhadū fī sabīli’llāhi

ūlāʾika yarjūna raḥmata’llāhi wa’llāhu ghafūrun raḥīm.
Verily, they who have attained to faith, and they who have forsaken
(hājarū) the domain of evil and are striving hard in God’s cause—these
it is who may look forward to God’s grace: for God is much-forgiving, a
dispenser of grace.
The source text lexical hājarū (literally ‘they migrated’) is rendered by the other
translators as ‘those who emigrate’, while Asad’s choice is ‘those who have forsaken
the domain of evil’.126 Asad attributes an additional connotative meaning to hājarū,
a ‘spiritual’ awakening indicative of the state of one who abandons evil and ‘turns to
God’.127 His rendition promotes the notion of the intertwining of belief in God with
sacrificial action as the basis of a good life and the expectation of God’s mercy.
The verses mentioned above are a small sampling of numerous other verses that Asad
exploits in a similar manner that is reflective of his reverential awe of the Qur’an and his
determination to demonstrate that it is indeed a lucid, intelligible, and well-argued
scripture for qawmin yatafakkarūn: ‘people who think’. From all of the above, it is
evident that Asad’s rendition enhances the operative and persuasive characteristics of
his target text considerably, consistent with his expressed intention to increase
appreciation of the Qur’an in the Western world.128
v) Rationalist Interpretations
Asad’s rationalist bent also reveals itself in his exposition of a number of verses. One
such example is Q. 2:31:
Wa-ʿallama Ādama’l-asmāʾa kullahā thumma ʿaraḍahum

ʿalā’l-malāʾīkati fa-qāla anbiʾūnī bi-asmāʾi hāʾūlāʾi in kuntum
s ̣ādiqīn.
And He imparted unto Adam all the names [of things], then He brought
them within the ken of the angels and said: ‘Declare unto Me the names
of these [things] if what you say is true.’
The source text term asmāʾā is rendered without exception as ‘names’ by all the
translators addressed in this study. What these ‘names’ are, or whether this word
is a metonym for all ‘knowledge’ or all ‘languages’, has been the subject of
exegetical debate for centuries.129 Asad does concede that ‘according to all
philologists’ the term ism implies ‘conveying the knowledge [of a thing]’. However,
he goes on to elaborate that in ‘philosophical terminology’ ism denotes a ‘concept’.
Given that Adam represents the whole human race, in this context, this term ‘denotes
man’s faculty of logical definition and, thus, of conceptual thinking’.130 In the case of
Q. 2:26–27:
… yuḍillu bihi kathīran wa-yahdī bihi kathīran wa-mā yuḍillu bihi

illā’l-fāsiqīna’lladhīna yanquḍūna ʿahda’llāhi min baʿdi mīthāqhi …
… but none does He cause thereby to go astray save the iniquitous, who
break their bond with God after it has been established [in their
nature] …
Asad infers ʿahd (the ‘covenant’ or ‘bond with God’) to denote ‘man’s moral obligation
to use his in-born gifts … in the way intended for them by God’. In addition, the
‘confirmation of this covenant’ is ‘man’s realization [arising out of his God-bestowed
faculty of reason] of his own weakness and dependence on … God’s will with reference
to his own behaviour’. He draws on a cross-reference with Q. 50:16 (closer to man than
his neck-vein) to imply that man’s ‘bond with God’ is very intimate, an instinctively
perceived feeling, in fact approaching an ‘innate relationship with God’.131
Another interesting example of a rationalistic approach is where both Asad and Abdel
Haleem differentiate between the singular and plural of the source text lexical shayt ̣ān
(Q. 2:268) and shayāt ̣īn (Q. 2:14), translating the former as ‘satan’ and the latter as ‘evil
ones’ respectively, whereas all the other translators render these as ‘satan/devil’ and
‘satans/devils’ respectively. While the connotative implication in Abdel Haleem’s
rendition is to ‘people who act like a satan’ in line with al-Zamakhsharī’s132 exegesis of
Q. 2:14, Asad gives his a psychological twist. Drawing on a very rare usage of the
triconsonantal verb shat ̣ana (shayt ̣ān being one of its nominal derivatives)—‘depraved
and corrupt’,133 and grammarians such as Rāghib,134 Asad interprets this as an allusion
to inner wicked urges, the ‘evil propensities in man’s own soul, especially all impulses
which run counter to truth and morality’.135
Given Asad’s assertion that the momentum, cultural energy, and egalitarianism
of Islam are derived entirely from its two sources (the Qur’an and ḥadīth), he is
very insistent on the pedagogical role the Qur’an has in establishing and fostering
general moral, social, economic, political, and legal principles. For instance, he
enunciates a general principle based on a historical reference in his translation
of Q. 2:189:
… wa-laysa’l-birru bi-an taʾtū’l-buyūta min ẓuhūrihā walākinna’l-birra

mani’ttaqā wa-ʾtū’l-buyūta min abwābihā …
… However, piety does not consist in your entering houses from the rear
[as it were], but truly pious is he who is conscious of God. Hence, enter
houses through their doors …
According to a number of exegetical commentators, ‘entry through the back door’ is a

historical reference to a prevailing social custom of the time. The Arabs would enter
thus on their return from a pilgrimage.136 Drawing on the connotative meaning of the
source text lexical bāb (singular of abwāb, ‘door’) as a ‘means of access’, Asad
extrapolates it to denote the ‘right and appropriate approach’. On this basis he reasons
that the mere observance of religious rituals (‘the back door’) cannot fulfill their
purpose unless each act is imbued with spiritual God-consciousness (the ‘front door’).
In this manner, he lays down the general principle that for a moral and upright
existence, God-consciousness should be the basis for all actions.
Finally, it must be emphasised that while it may not be explicitly clear from the verses
chosen for the present study, Asad was markedly influenced by al-Zamakhsharī’s
‘rationalistic trend’, al-Rāzi’s ‘philosophical digressions’ and Muhammad ʿAbduh’s
‘social interpretations’,137 but he also frequently wove in his own informed opinions,
as is witnessed by the frequent usage of the phrase ‘to my mind’.138 His complete
rendition frequently cites these exegetes, amongst others such as al-Ṭabarī, and has
been considered to reflect the merits as well as the flaws of the rationalistic and
philosophical schools of Islamic thought.139
The Distinctive Attributes of a Qur’anic Translatorial Habitus
It is axiomatic that fidelity to the source text is considered the ideal doxa of the
Translation Studies field, imposing certain norms and expectations. However, in
practice, loyalty to the source text is almost always compromised as translation
inescapably reflects its social and historical conditions; it is never neutral. Furthermore,
ideological and theological dimensions are additional constraints on an individual’s
reading of the Qur’an given its sacred nature and the prevailing doxa/narratives of time
and place which serve to accentuate certain features of the translatorial habitus.
Moreover, the translator (or commissioning agency) may have a covert agenda or
defined purpose. Hence, the end product, the target text, is highly ‘marked’ in its
orientation. As Greifenhagen contends, the target text can ‘betray’ the source text (that
is portray it in as negative a light as possible); ‘defend’ it by glossing over perceived
deficiencies (thereby presenting it in as positive a light as possible); or ‘valorise’ it by
enhancing the semantic and conceptual values, all within the aforementioned
restrictions.140 Are any of these phenomena observable empirically in the present
study?
In light of the above, Asad’s role as a convert could be to valorise the source text with a
view perhaps, to justifying his conversion to Islam. The question is how does his
habitus facilitate this accomplishment? Drawing on the compartmentalisation of the
components that contribute to habitus (Figure 1), it can be postulated that Asad
possesses two class habituses (Figure 2), his original one acquired during his early life
Fig. 2. Simplistic Representation of Asad’s Qur’anic Translatorial Habitus.
in a Central European cultural and social milieu, and a later one attained during his long
association with Islamic values, societies, and cultures. Notwithstanding Asad’s
contention that his conversion to Islam had been a ‘conscious whole-hearted
transference of allegiance from one cultural environment to another, entirely different
one’,141 the influence of his original class habitus is observable, particularly in his
lexical choices and the rendition of certain culture-specific expressions. For instance,
his Biblical-style usage of pronouns signifies his reverence of the source text. Indeed,
this hallmark is discernible in his other writings: his memoirs in English abound in
translated Arabic dialogue utilising ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and other culture-specific
expressions.142 Certainly, the persistence of the imagery and thought processes
associated with his original habitus is demonstrably apparent in all of his writings, and
is perhaps suggestive of the durability and transposition of this original habitus.
Witness his account of his conversion: his use of the phrase ‘Islam came over me like a
robber’ is very reminiscent of ‘if robbers by night’ from the King James Bible.143
To return to Asad’s lexical choices and the rendition of certain source text expressions,
while there are significant Judeo-Christian overtones (e.g. ‘apostle’, ‘vouchsafe’,
‘succour’) which are incontrovertible, in some instances there appears to be an
obtrusion almost against his will, for example in the case of ‘salvation’ discussed
above. Moreover, he occasionally displays Judeo-Christian engendered sensibilities
against certain terminology. His reluctance to use ‘disbeliever’ or ‘unbeliever’
(given their somewhat disparaging connotations) for kāfir is one example. Perhaps, this
is a form of ‘lexical priming’, the psycholinguistic phenomenon where, in the mind of
the individual, ‘each word becomes cumulatively loaded with contexts and co-texts in
which it is encountered’?144 This raises many intriguing questions. When during the
acquisition of habitus does lexical priming occur? Is it a durable component of habitus
that makes its impression subconsciously into diametrically different texts and contexts
and is retained even when one’s ideology, philosophy, or lifestyle alters drastically?
How observable is it in the translation of other sacred texts or other language
combinations?
Interestingly, the study also leads to the conjecture that Asad’s transposable disposition
is reflected in the rationalistic stance detected in his target text. However, in this case, it
would appear that this disposition acquired from his initial class habitus is modified via
the cultural capital he procured following his conversion, his knowledge and expertise
in ḥadīth and classical Qur’anic exegesis. Therefore, his rationalistic interpretations are
substantiated through these sources giving them an Islamic hue. Moreover, his
psychoanalytical and philosophical predilections are also subjected to an Islamic prism.
Indeed, this modus operandi is demonstrable in his very first translation of an Arabic
text, Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ by al-Bukhārī, first published in 1938.
Two astonishing features stand out in a comparison of Asad’s translations of the Qur’an
and al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ. Asad’s sociopolitical environment and the prevailing doxa, the
public and meta-narratives of the time, that influenced his translation of the Ṣaḥīḥ
(British Colonial India of the 1930s) were diametrically opposed to the late
twentieth-century milieu in which he undertook his Qur’an translation (from 1963 to
1980). Secondly, notwithstanding the almost thirty-year hiatus between them, a number
of motifs pervade both—man’s free will, and man’s reason and intellect—a very strong
affirmation of the consistency and immutability of Asad’s most cherished Islamic
beliefs. Indeed, his assertion that Islam changed the whole meaning and objective of his
life is manifested in all of his clarifications of both source texts, highlighting the very
marked influence of belief and ideology which arguably comprises the conscious,
intentional component in a translatorial habitus local.
The issue of whether or not Asad’s translatorial habitus makes for a ‘truer’
translation/interpretation of the Qur’an is an unanswerable question.145 Nevertheless,
this study has exposed nuances and qualities of certain elements in the acquisition and
interaction of habitus. There appears to be empirical evidence to support the hypothesis
that lexical priming is an enduring transmutable constituent of a translatorial habitus. Is
this restricted to the translation of sacred texts, or to particular habituses? Studies on
other texts and other language combinations could be undertaken to test this
hypothesis. Secondly, the analysis undertaken here clearly corroborates earlier
studies that have established the significant role played by ideology and belief in
translatorial habitus. In the present study, it would appear that capital—rationalism or

scientific knowledge for instance—can become subservient and serve as a vehicle to
validate particular notions and philosophies. The analysis also suggest that original
beliefs and systems are somewhat fixated in one’s habitus long even when one
consciously rejects all or aspects of them. Asad’s preoccupation and reiterative
rejection of the concepts of ‘God’s chosen people’ and ‘vicarious atonement’ as a
validation of his newer Islamic ideology is a case in point.
The potential of translatorial habituses to play key functions in today’s global, volatile
world has been highlighted.146 As Johanna Pink has recently said, ‘the Qur’an and its
translation have become a battleground’,147 with an ever-increasing divide not only
between the emic/etic camps, but also within the believers themselves. In fact, there has
been a paradigm shift in the background of Muslim translators over the last five to six
decades. A significant number of recent translations by Muslims are the work of
academics, rather than Islamic scholars with their traditional background in Arabic,
tafsīr and ḥadīth. Recent translations from non-Muslims also indicate a similar trend.
Texts such as Droge’s The Qur’ān: A New Annotated Translation (category one), Ali
Ünal’s Qur’ān: with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English (category two),
Yüksel et. al’s Qur’ān: A Reformist Translation (category two), or Leaman’s The
Qur’ān: A Philosophic Guide (category one) offer valuable resources for further studies
with a view to identifying the influence of specific ideologies and biases on Qur’anic
translatorial habituses which should make important contributions to the sociological
turn in studies of the Qur’an.
NOTE
*I would like to express my gratitude to Helen Blatherwick for all her advice and support.
1 Greifenhagen, ‘Traduttore traditore’, p. 285.
2 See, for example, Simeoni, ‘The Pivotal Status’; Inghilleri, ‘Habitus, Field and Discourse’; and
Inghilleri, ‘The Sociology of Bourdieu’.
3 See, for example, Gouanvic, Sociologie de la Traduction; Inghilleri, ‘Habitus, Field and
Discourse’; Inghilleri, ‘The Sociology of Bourdieu’; Pym et al., Beyond Descriptive Translation
Studies; Wolf and Fukari, Constructing a Sociology; Wolf, ‘The Sociology of Translation’.
4 Vorderobermeier, Remapping Habitus, p. 15.
5 Elmarsafy, The Enlightenment Qur’an, Preface.
6 Lawrence, The Koran in English, p. xxv: Wild, ‘Muslim Translators and Translations’,
pp. 164–165.
7 Wild, ‘Muslim Translators and Translations’, p. 176.
8 Simeoni, ‘The Pivotal Status’, p. 15; Liu, ‘Habitus of Translators’, p. 1,169.
9 Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939). Volume 1 was published in English as The
Civilizing Process in 1969, and volume 2 in 1982. Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish
descent whose work was pretty much ignored until its translation into English in 1969.
10 Elias, The Society of Individuals, p. 244; Dunning and Mennell, ‘Preface’, p. ix.
11 His most-often quoted definition of habitus is as follows: ‘[un] système de dispositions

durables et transposables qui, intégrant toutes les expériences passées, fonctionne à chaque
moment comme une matrice de perceptions, d’appréciations et d’actions, et rend possible
l’accomplissement de tâches infiniment différenciées, grâce aux transferts analogiques de
schèmes permettant de résoudre les problèmes de même forme’ (Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une
théorie, pp. 178–179); ‘[a] system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past
experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions
and makes possible the achievement of infintely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transfers
of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shaped problems’ (Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory
of Practice, p. 95).
12 Scott and Marshall, A Dictionary.
13 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 86.
14 Smith, ‘Ethos, Habitus and Situation’.
15 Johnson, The Field, pp. 4–5.
16 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 15
17 Bourdieu, Practical Reason, p. 57.
18 Simeoni, ‘The Pivotal Status’, p. 30; Inghilleri, ‘Habitus, Field and Discourse’, p. 244; and
Inghilleri, ‘The Sociology of Bourdieu’, p. 125.
19 These studies led to the introduction of the sub-genre of Translator Studies onto
James Holmes’ canonical ‘map of Translation Studies’ (see Chesterman ‘The Name and
Nature’).
20 In Buzelin, ‘How Devoted can Translators Be?’ (p. 65), Hélène Buzelin quotes a number of
studies from Crisafulli, ‘The Quest for an Eclectic Methodology, pp. 26–43. See also Munday,
Introducing Translation Studies, p. 26.
21 Inghilleri, ‘The Sociology of Bourdieu’, p. 126.
22 Gouanvic, Sociologie de la Traduction; Inghilleri, ‘Habitus, Field and Discourse’; Inghilleri,
‘The Sociology of Bourdieu’; Pym et al., Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies; Wolf and
Fukari, Constructing a Sociology; Wolf, ‘The Sociology of Translation’.
23 Simeoni, ‘The Pivotal Status’, p. 24.
24 Simeoni, ‘The Pivotal Status’, p. 12; Buzelin, ‘How Devoted can Translators Be?’, p. 63.
25 It is noteworthy that Sela-Sheffy suggests a more nuanced image of the translator in her study
of Hebrew translations in Israel (‘How to be a [Recognized] Translator’, p. 1). The concept of
habitus has increasingly been applied as an analytic tool for translations into, or from a variety of
languages such as French, Finnish, and Greek (Gouanvic, Sociologie de la Traduction; Abdallah
‘The Interface’; and Yannakopoulou ‘The Influence of the Habitus’ respectively), and
Eastern languages such as Turkish, Persian, and Chinese (Durmuş, ‘A Habitus-Oriented
Perspective’; Taghavi, ‘The Translator’s Habitus and Shifts’; Zhiguo, ‘Habitus, Field and
Translatorial Act’; and Wen-Chun Liang, ‘Translators’ Behaviors from a Sociological
Perspective’ respectively); in single case studies (Liu, ‘Habitus of Translators’; Durmuş,
‘A Habitus-Oriented Perspective’) and in studies comparing translatorial habituses in a specific
genre (Taghavi, ‘The Translator’s Habitus and Shifts’; Abdallah, ‘The Interface’; and Wen-Chun
Liang, ‘Translators’ Behaviors from a Sociological Perspective’). In addition, several studies
have ‘remapped’ or ‘re-constructed’ the conceptual framework of habitus in the realm of the
sociology of translation (Vorderobemeier, ‘The (Re-)Construction of habitus’; Meylaerts,
‘Habitus and Self-Image’).
26 Simeoni, ‘Traduire les sciences sociales’, p. 30, Buzelin, ‘How Devoted can Translators Be?’,
p. 85.
27 So, for example, lexical choices are the basis of Hasan’s ‘Bridging the Linguistic and Cultural
Gap’, whereas shift patterns are explored in Rezvani and Nouraey, ‘A Comparative Study of
Shifts’, and collocations and metaphor, respectively, in Alshaje’a, ‘Issues in Translating
Collocations’, and Najjar, ‘Metaphors in Translation’.
28 Matar, ‘Alexander Ross’; Al-Shabab, ‘Textual Source and Assertion’; Shah, ‘A Critical
Study of Abdel Haleem’s New Translation; Shah, ‘A Critical Analysis of the Qur’anic
Translation by George Sale’; Shah, ‘A Critical Study of Rodwell’s Translation’.
29 Greifenhagen, ‘Traduttore traditore’. See also the recent special issue of JQS on ‘The Qur’an
in Western Europe’.
30 Robinson, ‘Sectarian and Ideological Bias’.
31 Simeoni, ‘The Pivotal Status’, p. 24.
32 Buck, ‘Discovering’, p. 21.
33 On these terms, see McCutcheon, ‘Theoretical Background’.
34 Smith, ‘Comparative Religion’, p. 53.
35 Homel and Sherry, Mapping Literature, p. 53.
36 Genette, Paratexts, p. 1–2
37 Lawrence, The Koran in English, p. xxvi.
38 Lawrence, The Koran in English, pp. 29, 50, 81.
39 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 164
40 Baker, Translation and Conflict, p. 19.
41 Baker, Translation and Conflict, pp. 28–48.
42 Lawrence, The Koran in English, pp. 32–33.
43 Greifenhagen, ‘Why did Luther …?’.
44 Lawrence, The Koran in English, pp. 50–51.
45 Lawrence, The Koran in English, p. xxii.
46 http://www.sandowbirk.com/paintings/recent-works/. See also Lawrence, The Koran in
English, pp. 135–172, in which he discusses this project.
47 Lawrence, The Koran in English, p. xxii
48 Nasr et al., The Study Quran, p. xiii.
49 Khan, English Translations of the Holy Qur’an; Kidwai, ‘Translating the Untranslatable’.
50 Robinson, ‘Sectarian and Ideological Bias’; Wild, ‘Muslim Translators and Translations’.
51 Mohammed, ‘Assessing English Translations’.
52 Lawrence, The Koran in English, pp. 29, 50, 81, 135.
53 Buzelin, ‘How Devoted can Translators Be?’.
54 Basnett, ‘The “Translation Turn”’, p. 36.
55 This was selected as it is regarded as being the ‘gold standard’ in other comparative studies on
the basis that it ‘gives a fairly literal rendering of the source text’ (Robinson, ‘Sectarian and
Ideological Bias’, p. 261).
56 There are two ḥadīths that refer to this Sura as the ‘pinnacle’ or ‘peak’ of the Qur’an:
‘Muʿaqal b. Yasār narrated that the Prophet Muḥammad (peace be upon him) said, “al-Baqara is
the sanām—the ‘hump’ (pinnacle) and its dhirwa—‘zenith’, ‘climax’”’(my translation); and
‘Narrated Abū Hurayrah: The Messenger of Allah said: For everything there is a hump (pinnacle)
and the hump (pinnacle) of the Qur’an is Surat-al-Baqarah … (Jāmʿi al-Tirmidhī: Chapter 42:
‘On the Virtues of the Qur’an’).
57 Asad, The Road to Mecca, p. 54; Kramer, Jewish Discovery of Islam, p. 22; Nawwab,
‘A Matter of Love’, p. 156.
58 Asad, The Road to Mecca, p. 55.
60 Nawwab, ‘A Matter of Love’, p. 156.
61 Asad was working as a mere telephonist for a news wire service, and acting on
inside information provided by a waiter friend at the hotel where Madame Gorky was
staying incognito he managed to interview her, while no other journalists had access to her.
She was on a secret mission to petition aid from the West in the face of a huge famine ravaging
Russia.
62 Although published in 1924, Unromantisches Morgenland was only translated into English
in 2004.
63 Hofmann, ‘Muhammad Asad’, pp. 235–236.
66 Asad, Islam at the Crossroads, p. 5.
67 ‘All his doubts were cleared in a spiritual, electrifying epiphany—reminiscent of the
experience of some of the earliest Muslims—which he narrated in a striking passage that he wrote
some thirty years after this turning-point in his life’ (Kramer, Jewish Discovery of Islam, p. 228;
see also Asad, The Road to Mecca, pp. 308–311).
68 Asad, Islam at the Crossroads, p. 6; Nawwab, ‘A Matter of Love’, p. 159.
69 Asad, The Road to Mecca, p. 49. Hofmann contends that Asad was probably that very
rare phenomenon—a Westerner who came closer than anybody else to becoming a ‘real’ Arab
—(Hofmann, ‘Muhammad Asad’, p. 235).
72 Asad and Asad, Home-coming of the Heart, p. 21.
73 Asad wrote Der Weg nach Mekka, his German version of The Road to Mecca, in
1955. The first German edition was published by S. Fischer Verlag, and a revised version in
1982.
74 Kramer, Jewish Discovery of Islam, p. 234.
75 Hofmann, ‘Muhammad Asad’, p. 237.
76 The following is a list of his writings:
(i) Unromantisches Morgenland (c. 1925);
(ii) Islam at the Crossroads (1934);
(iii) an annotated translation of al-Bukhārī’s Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ entitled Ṣaḥīḥ
al-Bukhārī: The Early Years of Islam (1935–1938). He spent ten years on this project, and
it was nearing completion when all his manuscripts were destroyed during the partition of
India and the creation of Pakistan;
(iv) The Road to Mecca (1954);
(v) Der Weg nach Mekka (1955),
(vi) The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961);
(vii) The Message of the Qur’an (1964–1980), an interpretation of, and a commentary on,
the Muslim holy Book;
(viii) This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987);
(ix) Home-coming of the Heart (1932–1992) (2015).
Between 1946 and 1947 he also brought out a journal, Arafat: A Monthly Critique of Muslim
Thought.
77 Harder, ‘Muhammad Asad’, p. 539
78 Kramer, Jewish Discovery of Islam, p. 225.
79 Lawrence, The Koran in English, pp. 65–66, 70–73.
80 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. iv.
81 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. iv. Asad maintains that under the impact of modern
economic circumstances which have radically changed the time-honoured way of life of the
Bedouin, the purity of their language is rapidly disappearing and may soon cease to be a living
guide to students of the Arabic tongue (p. v).
82 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. v.
83 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. ii.
84 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, original italicised, p. ii.
85 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, original italicised, p. vii.
86 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, original italicised, p. vii.
87 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. i.
89 Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, ch. 7 and 8.
90 Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, pp. 121–122.
91 Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, pp. 126–127.
92 Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, p. 120.
93 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. 907 n. 4.
95 Wehr, A Dictionary, p. 320.
96 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. 1.
98 Yahdī bihi’llāhu mani’ttabaʿa riḍwānahu subula’l-salāmi wa-yukhrijuhum mina’l-ẓulumāti
ilā’l-nūri bi-idhnihi … (Q. 5:16). Asad renders it as follows: through which God shows unto all
that seek His goodly acceptance the paths leading to salvation and by His grace brings them out
of the depths of darkness into the light (p. 145).
100 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. 28 n. 109. Notably, Asad’s refutation of the Jewish
doctrine of ‘the chosen people’ is much more frequent than his rejection of the Christian doctrine
of ‘vicarious atonement’.
101 Asad’s rendition of the phrase is as follows: … God will in time bring forth [in your stead]
people whom He loves and who love him …(p. 155).
102 … wa-mā ūtītum mina’l-ʿilmi illā qalīlan (Q. 17:85). Asad’s translates this as … you have
been granted very little of [real] knowledge, whereas Pickthall’s rendition is as follows: … and of
knowledge ye have been vouchsafed but little (The Meaning, p. 432).
103 … wa-mā ūtiya Mūsā wa-ʿĪsā … (Q. 3:84), which Asad’s translates as: … and that which
has been vouchsafed by their Sustainer unto Moses and Jesus …, while Pickthall’s version is: …
and that which was vouchsafed unto Moses and Jesus … (The Meaning, p. 80). Also: wa-lā
yastat ̣iʿūna lahum nas ̣ran wa-lā anfusahum yans ̣urūna (Q. 7:192). This is one example where the
nominative for nas ̣r and the verbal form yans ̣urūna are juxtaposed in one verse. Asad’s reading is
as follows: and neither are able to give them succor no succor themselves (p. 233), whereas
Pickthall’s translation is: And cannot give them help, nor can they help themselves (The Meaning,
p. 166).
104 www.biblehub.com.
105 Wehr, A Dictionary, p. 297, defines this as ‘to be the successor of someone’.
106 … innī jāʿilun fī’l-arḍi khalīfa (Q. 2:30), rendered by Asad as: … Behold, I am about to
establish upon earth one who shall inherit it (p. 8).
107 Boring, ‘Matthew’.
108 man qatala nafsan (Q. 5:32). Abdel Haleem’s version is: if anyone kills a person …
(The Qur’an, p. 71). Pickthall translates it as: whosoever killeth a human being (The Meaning,
p. 106).
109 Asad, p. 147.
111 Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, p. 57.
112 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, Appendix 1, p. 989.
113 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, Appendix 1, p. 990.
115 Nasr et al., The Study Qur’an, p.18.
116 Nasr et al., The Study Qur’an, p. 292.
117 Wehr, A Dictionary, p. 297.
121 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. iii.
122 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, original italicised, p. ii.
123 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. ii.
124 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, pp. 92–93: Q. 3:161, n 123.
126 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. 47–48 n. 203.
128 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. iii.
129 Nasr et al., The Study Quran, p. 22.
131 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, pp. 7–8 n. 19.
132 Jār Allāh al-Zamakhshārī (d. 538/1144), a classical exegete considered to have a
rationalist/Muʿtazilī approach.
133 The common meaning of the triconsonantal shat ̣ana is ‘to fasten or tie (something with a
rope)’ (www.lisaan.net).
134 The Rāghib referred to is Abū al-Qāsim Ḥ usayn al-Rāghib (d. 630/1251) the author of
al-Mufradāt fī gharīb al-Qurʾān.
136 Nasr et al., The Study Qur’an, p. 83.
137 Hammad, The Gracious Qur’an, pp. 1,198–1,203.

138 Asad, The Message of the Qur’an, p. 21 n. 83, p 108 n. 38, p. 121 n. 107.
139 Hammad, The Gracious Qur’an, pp. 1,198–1,203.
140 Greifenhagen, ‘Traduttore traditore’, p. 285.
142 Asad, The Road to Mecca, pp. 20, 67, 184, 320, etc.
143 Obadiah 5: www biblehub.com.
144 Hoey, Lexical Priming, p. 8.
145 Asad’s translation was considered quite controversial among Muslim theological circles,
and the Muslim World League, the orignal sponsors for its publication withdrew their support
upon Asad’s refusal to amend his text according to their guidelines (Asad and Asad,
Home-coming of the Heart, p. 249).
146 Wolf, The Sociology of Translation’, p. 137.
147 Pink, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. 5.
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Li-qawmin yatafakkarūn (Q.

In his analysis of the history of Qur’an translations, Franz Volker Greifenhagen

Journal of Qur’anic Studies 21.2 (2019): 1–38

In this article, Asad’s translation will be contextualised against a number of English

Habitus as a Methodological Tool

According to Bourdieu, individuals begin to acquire their habitus in early childhood

Bourdieu’s sociological concepts of habitus and ﬁeld have made a momentous

other writings, and depictions in numerous articles, conferences, eulogies, and

Ideology & Beliefs

Political Economic Professional

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of habitus acquisition,

Birk’s ‘American Qur’an’46—an unprecedented, extraordinary, hand-transcribed

Figure 1 above is a schematic representation of the acquisition of habitus, its deﬁning

Situating Asad’s Translation of the Qur’an

i) Muhammad Asad’s Life

Before moving on to discuss Asad’s translation, it is important to address his

Unromantisches Morgenland: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Reise (The Unromantic

In Islam he found a religious system that he described as ‘a perfect work of architecture’

extensively in Arabia on semi-ofﬁcial trips on behalf of the Saudi king, while

Oscillating between Europe (Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Gibraltar, and Spain)

ii) An Overview of Asad’s Translation: ‘The Message of the Qur’an’

i) Comparative Intertextual Analysis of Lexical Choices

Another noteworthy characteristic of Asad’s translation is his usage of pronouns such

Furthermore, Asad displays an idiosyncratic propensity in the choice of target text

An instance of a verbal lexical that Asad portrays in a distinctive ‘Asadian’ manner is

Interestingly, Asad’s lexical predilection in most of the cases mentioned above is

fa-ṭawwaʿat lahu nafsuhu qatla akhīhi fa-qatalahu fa-aṣbaḥa min

Asad’s rendition of nafs as ‘passion’ in this case is unprecedented. Compare this to

But his soul (nafs) prompted him to kill his brother…

ii) Allegorical Interpretations

Mathaluhum ka-mathali’lladhī’stawqada nāran fa-lammā aḍāʾat mā

yubs ̣irūna s ̣ummun bukmun ʿumyun fa-hum lā yarjiʿūna aw ka-ṣayyibin

iii) Semantic Divergence

Q. 5:33 Innamā jazāʾū’lladhīna yuḥāribūna’llāha wa-rasūlahu

iv) Ideological Interpretations

Wa-idh akhadha’llāhu mīthāqa’lladhīna ūtū’l-kitāba la-tubayyinunnahu

Tilka ummatun qad khalat lahā mā kasabat wa-lakum mā kasabtum

Qul yā ahla’l-kitābi lima tas ̣uddūna ʿan sabīli’llāhi man āmana

Say: ‘O followers of earlier revelation! Why do you [endeavour to]

Inna’lladhīna āmanū wa’lladhīna hājarū wa-jāhadū fī sabīli’llāhi

Wa-ʿallama Ādama’l-asmāʾa kullahā thumma ʿaraḍahum

… yuḍillu bihi kathīran wa-yahdī bihi kathīran wa-mā yuḍillu bihi

… wa-laysa’l-birru bi-an taʾtū’l-buyūta min ẓuhūrihā walākinna’l-birra

According to a number of exegetical commentators, ‘entry through the back door’ is a

The Distinctive Attributes of a Qur’anic Translatorial Habitus

Fig. 2. Simplistic Representation of Asad’s Qur’anic Translatorial Habitus.

translatorial habitus. In the present study, it would appear that capital—rationalism or

11 His most-often quoted deﬁnition of habitus is as follows: ‘[un] système de dispositions

137 Hammad, The Gracious Qur’an, pp. 1,198–1,203.

Baker, Mona, Translation and Conﬂict: A Narrative Account (London–New York:

Durmuş, Hilal Erkazanci, ‘A Habitus-Oriented Perspective on Resistance to Language

——, ‘A Critical Analysis of the Qur’anic Translation by George Sale’, Islamic

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