This story's got legs.
Posted on 03/31/2007 9:08:59 PM PDT by Jacob Kell
The family of Laleh Bakhtiar, a 68-year-old Chicago-based academic, fears for the safety of the Christian-turned-Muslim following her publication of the first English translation of the Quran by an American woman and one that challenges the widespread belief that Muhammed granted husbands the right to beat their wives.
Bakhtier, who converted over 30 years ago, is releasing "The Sublime Quran" on April 10, a translation that is "universal, inclusive" and "with no parenthetical expressions," according to an interview she gave the American Muslim.
"The translation has internal consistency and reliability," she said. It also reverts translation of the Arabic word "daraba" in chapter 4, verse 34, of Islam's holy book – rendered as "beat" for centuries – "back to its original interpretation meaning 'to go away'."
Only last week, a German judge denied a divorce to a German woman of Moroccan descent, who claimed spousal abuse, because she and her husband came from a "Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife."
"That's what the claimant had to reckon with when she married the defendant," Judge Christa Datz-Winter wrote in a statement issued by a Frankfurt court.
The 26-year-old mother of two had been repeatedly beaten and threatened with death by her husband, according to the Guardian News.
Datz-Winter invoked the Quran to support her argument when the woman protested the decision, reading from verse 34 of sura 4 of the Quran, An-Nisa (Women), in which husbands are told to strike their wives as a final response to disobedience: "... as to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping places and beat them".
(Story continues below)
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Darned revisionists! I'm sticking to my King James Quran.
I actually fear for her..
Yup.
Claiming that the Koran doesn't require beating of women may result in your murder.
Loved your comment!
Can they remove all the parts about having to kill infidels and so on?
I guess you'd end up with a 5 page pamphlet if you remove the anti-women and anti-murder/global conquest parts though.
Christian-turned-Muslim? What was she thinking? I fear for her safety, but she is a fool.
This story's got legs.
I did some hasty research to find out about this judicial lady. I had no luck, but thanks to two websites, I am informed that the judge has been removed from the case.
Even too much for the Germans to take? I would not bet the farm on it.
Bakhtiar’s efforts have drawn both praise and criticism around the world, online and in newspapers. Muslims interviewed at one of New Jersey’s largest mosques, the Islamic Society of Central Jersey in South Brunswick, said her translation makes sense to them and may stop some men from hitting their wives. But they said they worry Bakhtiar hasn’t studied enough classical Arabic to gain widespread acceptance as a translator of sacred text.
“It’s great she’s trying to deal with this,” said Sarah Rashid, 23, of Moorestown, N.J., speaking after prayer one recent Friday at ISCJ. “I’m definitely intrigued by it. ... My only concern is that she’s not a scholar. She doesn’t seem to have the qualifications that would legitimate her translation. She’s only had three years (of classical Arabic). I’ve had five years, and I wouldn’t consider myself qualified to translate the Quran.”
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