to as having nafs—but never in a sense that undoubtedly produces a distinction between corporeal substance and abstract spirit. Later understandings of nafs reflect the conversation between Muslim intellectuals and Greek philosophical tradition, as found in al-Ghazl, who, despite his defense of bodily resurrection, read the Qur’n while upholding an Aristotelian idea of the soul that al-Rz rejected.28
In his translation of the Qur’n, British convert scholar Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1875–1936) explained the Qur’n’s first sra in his commentary as “the Lord’s Prayer of the Muslims.”29 It may be unsophisticated to think of the Qur’n as the “Muslim Bible,” but sometimes that’s what it becomes: As James W. Morris explains, “virtually all the extant English Qur’n translations are still profoundly rooted . . . in a semantic universe of allusions and parallels to the language and symbolism of Bible translations.”30 The first translation of the Qur’n that I read had come from Yusuf Ali (1872–1953), a colonial Indian Muslim living in London. The other major English translation from colonial India was that of Ahmadiyya scholar Maulana Muhammad Ali (1874–1951). Both translators sought to present the Qur’n within the genre of sacred literature as readers of English could recognize it: In their hands, Allh’s Arabic speech becomes King James English, peppered with thou and thy to decorate itself with an Anglo-biblical style. The divine He is capitalized to follow norms of Victorian-era English literature, the Qur’n’s Arabic names for Israelite prophets are Anglicized (‘s becomes Jesus, Ms becomes Moses), and the translators’ extensive notes often explain the Qur’n through references to the Bible or Christian tradition. In the mid-twentieth century, the Nation of Islam was purchasing these Qur’n translations in bulk from a Pakistani importer in New Jersey: South Asian Muslims’ experience of an English-speaking, Protestant colonial power thus produced the Qur’n that could resonate with an African American Muslim community led by the son of a Baptist preacher. In his commentary on the Qur’n, Elijah Muhammad also interpreted the subject headings that appeared in Maulana Muhammad Ali’s translation, as though he believed that these subject headings were part of the divinely revealed Arabic text.31 Even the “Qur’n” as Elijah conceptualized it reflects an act of translation. Perceiving the Qur’n through a Protestant background that taught him what scriptures were and how they worked, he expressed little interest in adth collections or Muslim interpretive traditions as conduits through which the Qur’n must be read. A “Muslim Bible” that he could read for himself, essentially a superior version of the Bible that he already knew, was exactly what he sought and found. When presented in translation to a mostly non-Muslim society, the Qur’n might inspire some readers to convert, but the Qur’n undergoes a conversion of its own. Perhaps this is what it means for religious scholars in sixteenth-century South Asia to have opposed Bengali translation of the Qur’n, on the grounds that such a project would constitute the “Hinduization of Islam.”32
to as having nafs—but never in a sense that undoubtedly produces a distinction between corporeal substance and abstract spirit. Later understandings of nafs reflect the conversation between Muslim intellectuals and Greek philosophical tradition, as found in al-Ghaz