Turkey: Proliferation of Koran Translations Pushing Turks to “Verge of Division”
If you ask practicing Turkish Muslims, virtually all will tell you there is one Islam, based on one Koran, and one set of traditions of the Prophet. But very few Turks speak Arabic, the language of the Koran, and a recent proliferation of translations and commentaries. That, in turn, is raising concerns in some quarters that differing interpretations of Islam in Turkey could become a destabilizing factor in the country’s religious life.
The issue of translating the Koran has always been a controversial one for Turkish Muslims, who consider the original Arabic text to be the word of God.
While Europeans set to translating the Koran as early as the 12th century, a full Turkish translation and commentary was not brought out until the late 1930s, on the personal orders of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Even today, the state-authorized translation remains by far the most purchased commentary in Turkey. Its popularity serves as a symbol of the success of Republican efforts to modernize and nationalize religion.
Since Turkey began liberalizing its economy in the early 1980s, however, the state version has had to compete with a growing number of alternative translations.
"There is a deliberate attempt, using translations, to build a new understanding of religion," says Ebubekir Sifil, a Koranic expert.
Suleyman Ates, the former head of the huge state bureaucracy charged with controlling Islam in Turkey, said the latest trend is for every religious group to have its own Turkish translation of the Koran. This tendency, he added, has "brought Islam to the verge of division."
In theological terms, Ates and Sifil are like chalk and cheese: Sifil is an outspoken opponent of efforts to modernize Islam, while Ates hews closely to the rationalist version of Islam backed by the Turkish state. And yet they both agree that the diversity of translations undermines the ability of Turks to reach a common understanding of the Koran.
Aykan Erdemir, an anthropologist of Islam at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, believes that contention over differing interpretations is the wave of the future. "In the past, people recited the Koran in Arabic without necessarily knowing what it meant, and the simplicity of Muslim ritual gave Islam an image of unity," he said. "Go into four flats in an apartment block today, and you will find four different Koranic exegeses on the shelves: there is a move to personalize piety."
In the eyes of Hakan Yavuz, author of several books on Islam in Turkey, the current trend is the product of "the way religious authority is fragmented by a market economy, [and] the way Islam becomes a commodity to be bought and sold in the bazaar, like anything else."
Koranic scholar Ahmet Tekir estimates that there are now "almost a hundred" translations on the Turkish market. The Koran "is a victim of its own success," said Tekir, who published a book in 2006 criticizing the quality of many of the newer translations. "Nearly a million translations sell each year, costing anything up to $70 a copy: there is money in this for those immoral enough to look to make profit from the Koran."
But it isn't just personal gain that pushes people to offer up new translations, theologians complain. It is also the desire of various religious groups to carve out a niche for themselves in the market. "Each group has a different interpretation of Islam," says Ebubekir Sifil. "Each of them wants to legitimize their interpretation through the Koran. The best way to do that is to translate it."
Written in allusive Arabic, the Koran is difficult to translate. Perhaps unsurprisingly in a country that has long banned women with covered heads from working in the public sector, one common area of controversy centers on exactly what the Koran says about women's apparel.
With the competition over translations showing no signs of going away, not even the state religious bureaucracy has been able to steer clear of controversy.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs -- the lynchpin state-led efforts to build up a Republican religiosity since Turkey's founding in 1923, as well as the sponsor of the first-ever Turkish translation of the Koran – authorized the publication of a fresh five-volume Koranic commentary in 2008. What surprised some readers was a phrase in the commentary on verse 4:24 of the Koran: "according to some Sunni scholars, particularly companions of the Prophet, temporary marriage is permissible, and it was forbidden not by the Prophet but by the second Caliph."
Accepted by Shi'a Muslims, temporary marriage is not permitted by the four schools of Sunni Islamic law. The Directorate insists the wording of its commentary in no way implied support for the practice. In the second and third editions brought out since, the controversial phrase has been omitted.
Hakan Yavuz, the author, believes that without the Directorate of Religious Affairs to hold the field together, "a hundred different Islams would sprout up in Turkey."
Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.
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