by DANIEL BURKE
The Study Quran, a new translation of Muslim scripture IMAGE/CNN
On a warm November night in Washington, a small group of American Muslims gathered at Georgetown University to celebrate “The Study Quran,”new English translation of Islam’s most sacred scripture.
By the next evening, several said, the need for the book became painfully apparent.
The Islamic State had struck again, this time slaughtering 130 men and women in Paris. The group quoted the Quran twice in its celebratory statement.
After the attacks, President Barack Obama renewed his call for Muslim scholars and clerics to “push back” against “twisted interpretations of Islam.” Some U.S. presidential candidates fed anti-Islamic flames, creating the most hostile environment since 9/11, American Muslims said.
…
The translation an Islamic State recruiter reportedly sent to a young American is even harsher.
In the online version, a footnote asserts that Mohammed himself said: “Those upon whom wrath is brought down are the Jews and those who went astray are the Christians.”
The Jews “rejected Jesus, a prophet of God, as a liar,” the footnote continues, while Christians erred by believing that Jesus is divine.
Lumbard pushes back against that interpretation, arguing that elsewhere in the Quran it is evident that anyone, including Muslims, can irk God and wander from the straight and narrow. And the saying — or hadith — attributing Christian and Jewish insults to Mohammed is of debatable authenticity, the scholar says.
There were times, though, when even Mohammed disliked the Quran’s message. Verse 4:34 is one of those instances, said Maria Dakake, an expert on Islamic studies at George Mason University in Virginia.
One of the most controversial sections of the Quran, 4:34 is sometimes derisively called the “beat your wife” verse. It says that if men “fear discord and animosity” from their wives, they may strike them after first trying to admonish their spouse and “leave them in bed.”
“It’s obviously a difficult verse,” said Dakake, the only woman on the translation team of “The Study Quran.”
“I found it difficult when I first read it as a woman, and when people today, both men and women, try to address the meaning of the verse in a contemporary context, they can find it difficult to understand and reconcile with their own sense of right and wrong.”
But Dakake said that while reading through the reams of commentary, she found that Mohammed did not like the verse, either. In one hadith, or saying attributed the prophet, he reportedly said, “I wanted one thing, and God wanted another.”
CNN for more
(Thanks to reader)