Mu' meneen Brothers and Sisters,

As Salaam Aleikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.  (May Allah's Peace, Mercy and Blessings be upon all of you)

One of our brothers/sisters has asked this question:

Assalamu alaykum,

You wrote: "It would not matter how many scholars you gather to translate the Holy Quran, the Bohra community will never read the translation, unless and until their Syedna sanctions the translation. And this he will never do; because they know that once a person understands the simple message of Truth from Allah, he will leave the invocation and worship of man, and come to the sole invocation and worship of the Lord of the Worlds!"

No Nabi, no Imam, no Dai before or the present have authorized a translation of the Quran, so why do you blame just the marhum and present Dais for not providing one? Are they authorized to do a translation or is the Imam?

You don't believe in either, so why do you even care if they authorize it?

I know what the truth is...it is Islam.  It is the shahadat (La illaha illallah, Muhammadin Rasullah).  It is the Quran.  It is the pledge to the Imam az'Zaman and his Dawat to follow and uphold the tenets of Islam (Daim Islam).  But I also know my limitations in absorbing and understanding complex and esoteric knowledge which is the deeper parts of Islam.  You can learn and understand these types of topics if you attend sabaqs (lessons) just like you attend classes to learn mathematics you need to attend sabaqs to understand fully your faith.

(There may be some grammatical and spelling errors in the above statement. The forum does not change anything from questions, comments and statements received from our readers for circulation in confidentiality.)

Answer:

Who is authorized to translate the Quran?

In the name of Allah, We praise Him, seek His help and ask for His forgiveness. Whoever Allah guides none can misguide, and who-ever He allows to fall astray, none can guide them aright. We bear witness that there is no one (no idol, no person, no grave, no prophet, no imam, no dai, nobody!) worthy of worship but Allah Alone, and we bear witness that Muhammad (saws) is His slave-servant and the seal of His Messengers.

Neither the Messenger of Allah (saws), nor his companions, nor the noble imams, nor the muslims needed to ever translate the Holy Quran, simply because the people either spoke the Arabic language, or the countries the early muslims conquered and ruled for a good thousand years, Arabic became the state and spoken language of the people. When the muslim rule declined in the known world, and the European countries like England, France, etc. started conquering the world, these European-Christian rulers systematically removed Arabic as the court language and enforced their own language and culture on the conquered territories and in their schools. The muslim scholars were now faced with a dilemma of allowing their children to be pushed away from the guidance of the Holy Quran, or to translate the Quran in the spoken languages so that the people who did not speak and understand Arabic could understand the clear message of Islam and the Quran.

A person who speaks Arabic as his first language does not need a translation to understand the simple message of the Quran. Thus it was incomprehensible that the Messenger of Allah (saws), his companions, the noble imams, or the early muslims ever needed to translate the Quran, simply because the people spoke and understood the Arabic language!

But today, for people who do not speak and/or understand Arabic as a language, are left with four choices regarding the Quran:

Leave the guidance of the Quran, and make our own laws or follow our own whims and conjecture.

To recite the Quran in Arabic, without understanding a word of it.

To learn the Arabic language, so that we can understand the Message of our Creator.

To read the available translations, and understand the clear Message of the Quran.

There is a fifth option which some sects of Islam have taken: They are allowed to only ‘listen’ to the translation of the Quran from their self-made leaders and their ‘self-proclaimed’ holy men! These self-made leaders do not allow the common people to ‘read’ any translation of the Quran, but allow them to attend their internal ‘sabaqs’ and classes, so that they could listen to the meaning of the Holy Quran.

The Bohra leaders always say that if you want to understand the Quran, you must attend and LISTEN to their ‘sabaqs’ in their mosques or institutions. Now, predominantly, the Bohras speak and understand Gujrati (or the pseudonym ‘lisaan-e-daawat’) language. The question here is whether the ‘sabaqs’ and classes by the bhaishaebs and aamils are done in the Arabic language of the Quran or Gujrati? Because the common Bohra does not understand Arabic, the Bohra leaders, bhaisahebs, and aamils obviously, also translate the Quran into the language spoken and understood by their listeners, Gujrati!

Thus the issue here is not whether we are allowed to read the translation of the Quran, but rather, who is allowed to translate the Quran! The contradiction here is that we are allowed to ‘LISTEN’ to the Quran translations in Gujrati, but are not allowed to read the translations, simply because the Bohra leadership has not allowed or endorsed the translation in a book form!!!!!

And the absolute Truth of the matter is, that no matter how many times the bhaisahebs and the aamilsahebs invite you to attend their ‘sabaqs’, they never, ever, preach you the Quran as a whole! They might preach a couple of aayahs here, and a couple of aayahs there, but they just do not have a class whereby they preach the whole Quran from the first Surah of the Quran, Surah Fateha, to the 114^th and last Surah of the Quran, Surah An Naas! This education of the understanding of the whole Quran is not even in the syllabus of the Bohra university in Surat, Al Jameeatus Saifeeya. Even the graduates of this Bohra university have never read and understand the whole Quran from its beginning to its end!

In this way the community is systematically kept out of the understanding of the clear message of the Glorious Quran! The leaders tell you fiery stories of the companions and the family of the Messenger of Allah (saws), but seldom relate to you the stories and their lessons of the Holy Quran! And because the community is absolutely kept away from the clear guidance of the Glorious Quran, they have been fooled into invocation and reverence of man, rather than the invocation and worship of Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, Alone!

Thus, it is obvious that the Bohra leadership do translate the Quran verbally into Gujrati, but they never document it in a book form. Ever wondered why? It is because, if they were to document the translation of the whole Quran, their beliefs and their invocations and their deen becomes invalid to anybody who understands the message of the Glorious Quran! If one understands the clear message of the Quran, he will realize that there is absolutely no place for the invocation and reverence of Personalities in Islam! The Only Personality or Being worthy of invocation is the One Lord Allah Alone! All these self-made leaders, and their self-proclaimed holy men, and all their aptly decorated shops which they have opened to subjugate the people and steal their hard-earned money, become absolutely worthless as soon the Quran is understood in its entirety!

My beloved brother, I humbly ask you to go to your nearest bhaisaheb and/or aamil and ask him simply that you want to understand the Quran in its entirety! Go to any institution of the kothar and find out if they have even one ‘sabaq’ or class whereby they preach you only from the Quran! And see for yourself the vague answers you are going to get…..

You must first study so and so books to understand the message of the Quran!

You must first go here and there to get the basic knowledge, before you even try to understand the Quran!

You will just not be able to understand the message of the Quran in its entirety!

If you try to understand the Quran in its entirety, you will be misguided!

Each aayah of the Holy Quran has several meanings!

The Quran has ‘zaahir’ and ‘baatin’ meanings, and you need to be so and so to understand it!

The Quran has many ambiguous meanings, which can only be understood by ‘the people of knowledge’; ie. Themselves!

We do not have the ‘raza’ (or permission) to start such a class or ‘sabaq’!

Or they will directly attack your belief and ask you questions which automatically put you on the defensive:

Do you believe in the Syedna or not?

Are you a true mu’min, or have you become a munafiq?

What do you think you know more than the Syedna?

Who do you think you are, coming and asking us that you want to understand the Quran in its entirety?

Allah states Himself in the Holy Quran, that He in His Sublime Mercy and Rahmah, revealed the Glorious Quran for the guidance of all of mankind. He revealed the Glorious Quran to a nation whose people were mostly illiterate and most of them could not even read or write! Some of the closest companions of the Messenger of Allah (saws) were low caste slaves, shepherds, nomads, beduins and menial workers. But once they understood this simple, clear, and powerful message of the Holy Quran, these same shepherds and nomads and beduins of Arabia, took this Divine knowledge, and within a 100 years of the Prophet’s death, ruled almost all of the known world!

Contrary to what the Bohra leaders say about the complication and complexity of the Holy Quran, just take a look at what Allah says about His Book and His Message, and then decide who has more right that we should believe in. Allah, our Lord and Creator of everything that exists, or some men, who are engrossed in the subjugation and extortion of the common man!

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 2 Baqarah verse 185: "Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was sent down: this Book is a perfect guidance for mankind and consists of CLEAR teachings which show the right way and are a Criterion of the Truth and falsehood."

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 44 Surah Dukhan verse 58: We have made this Book easy in your own tongue so that they may ponder and take good counsel.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 43 Surah Zukhruf verses 1-3: Haa Meem. By this lucid (clear or open) Book. We have made it an Arabic Quran, so that you may understand it.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 6 Surah Anam verse 70: And leave alone those who have taken their ‘deen’ as a sport and past time, and have been deluded by the life of this world. Nevertheless, you go on admonishing them by reciting the Quran to them, lest any person should be seized because of his own deeds; and that too, at a time, when there would be no protector, no helper and no intercessor to rescue him from Allah; when no conceivable amount of ransom would be accepted from him. This is because such people shall be seized, in consequence of what they themselves had earned.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 15 Surah Al Hijr verse 9: It is We (Allah), Who has sent down this Quran, and We will assuredly guard it against corruption.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 12 Surah Yusuf verse 1-2: These are the verses of the Book that makes its object perfectly clear. We have sent it down as a Quran in Arabic, so that you may understand it well.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 16 Surah Nahl verse 89: We have sent down to you this Book, which makes everything plain, and is a guidance, blessing and good news to those who have surrendered themselves entirely.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 19 Surah Maryam verse 97: O Mohamed, We have made this Quran easy, and sent it down in your tongue so that you should give good news to the pious and warn the stubborn people.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 41 Surah Ha Mim As Sajdaah verse 2-4: This is a Revelation from the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful Allah. A Book whose verses are well-expounded, an Arabic Quran for the people who want to understand, and a giver of good news and a warner.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 18 Surah Kahf verse 1-3: All praise is for Allah Alone, Who has sent down this Book to His Servant (Mohamed (saws), and assigned nothing crooked to it. This Book says everything directly, so that he may warn the people of the severe chastisement of Allah and give good news to the believers, who do righteous deeds, that they will have an excellent reward.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 2 Surah Baqarah verse 99: We have sent down to you Revelations that clearly expound the Truth, and none but the disobedient reject them.

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 2 Surah Al-Baqarah verse 174: Indeed those, who conceal the commands that Allah has sent down in His Book and barter them away for paltry worldly gains, fill their bellies with fire. Allah will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He regard them as pure and there is a painful torment for them!

Allah says in the Holy Quran Chapter 2 Surah Baqarah verse 159: Those who conceal the clear (Revelations) and Guidance We have sent down, after We have made it clear for the people in the Book, on them shall be Allah’s ‘laanah’ and the ‘laanah’ of those who are entitled to curse!

Your Comment: I know what the truth is...it is Islam.  It is the shahadat (La illaha illallah, Muhammadin Rasullah).  It is the Quran.  It is the pledge to the Imam az'Zaman and his Dawat to follow and uphold the tenets of Islam (Daim Islam). 

The shahaadah is the Truth! The Quran is the Truth! Both are mentioned in the Holy Quran by Allah several times. Thus I absolutely agree with you.

The ‘pledge to the Imam-az-Zamaan and his Dawat’ is man-made! There is absolutely no evidence of this in the Holy Quran! I request and challenge you to produce evidence from the Quran for this pledge… just one aayah in the whole Quran that states that we have to pledge the imam-az-zamaan and his dawaat! Just one! And you can take the help of all your scholars and your leaders and your dais and your bhaisahebs and your aamils and your sheikhs and everybody else that you follow! Just produce an iota of evidence from the Holy Quran for this pledge!

May Allah guide you and us to read and understand the Glorious Quran in its entirety. May Allah help us, guide us and forgive us our sins. May Allah guide us to His Mercy and His Forgiveness, and keep us away from His Anger and His Wrath. May Allah guide us to the Straight Path of Islam.

May Allah guide you and us to read and understand the simple and plain words of the Glorious Quran. May Allah increase our knowledge from the Holy Quran. May Allah guide us to the Siraat al Mustaqeem.

May Allah guide you and us all to the Siraat al-Mustaqeem

Whatever written of Truth and benefit is only due to Allah’s Assistance and Guidance, and whatever of error is of me. Allah Alone Knows Best and He is the Only Source of Strength.

Your brother and well wisher in Islam,

Burhan