If every translation is a distortion

We had left off on one of the questions that have recently occupied the agenda. An interesting statement made about the rising danger of deism linked it to reading Qur'an translations (meal). It is truly a matter that concerns everyone who says "I am a Muslim," but when it comes to establishing a causal relationship between two social phenomena, it would not be possible to remain indifferent given the accumulated body of sociology.

Prof. Dr. Cağfer Karadaş, a member of the Supreme Board of Religious Affairs, in fact pointed to the causal path by which reading meal leads to deism by saying: "...the basic arguments of atheists and deists are currently formed not so much philosophically as through Qur'an translations," and one cannot help asking how the conclusion that meals drag young people into deism can be drawn from here. The statement itself already says that the subject of this kind of reading is atheists and deists. That is, the conclusion follows that only atheists and deists use Qur'an meals to construct their own arguments, and use them very badly at that, and we may begin by asking what share the meal, which is what is actually being distorted and misused here, can have in this.

When someone with ideological obsessions wants to construct an argument, there is essentially no textual force that can stop them. There, not only a meal but a person of the same character who knows the Arabic of the Qur'an can do the same thing. The issue here is not whether the meal reflects the original of the text, but the intention of the person reading or quoting, and unless this intention is corrected, nothing can be done starting from that text.

Essentially there is a general paradigm problem here concerning the understanding of the Qur'an. What everyone generally focuses on in readings of the Qur'an is a level of meaning at which the meanings found in the text itself can be resolved and understood objectively, for everyone. It is supposed that once the language of the text, its semantics, its muhkam-mutashabih, nasikh-mansukh, asbab al-nuzul, siyaq-sibaq and other textual features are known, nothing will remain that makes understanding the text difficult or prevents it. Yet even if all these problems were solved, the approach of the person who understands stands there as the most decisive factor: Is the person who understands sincere, intelligent, clever, a man, a woman, old, young, a villager, a city dweller, a believer, or is he reading the text as an ordinary text, etc.? All these factors are important factors determining the understanding of the text in its relation with the text, but they are factors that are often ignored.

There is a great difference between reading a text believing and reading it without believing that cannot be removed under any condition. Especially when it is the Qur'an at issue, no responsibility for any result that may come from reading it with the approach of someone who is already an atheist or deist can be placed on any meal.

On the other hand, as a precaution against this ill-intentioned reading, making a better meal using the resources of the Diyanet is offered as a solution, and this too is the product of an approach stemming from always remaining text-centered in understanding and ignoring the characteristics of the person reading. Yet one must focus not on the text but on the reader.

Otherwise, today the Qur'an has better translations than at any time in history. Not one, not two, not three. I cannot even calculate the number of meals currently available in Turkish. Of course all of them have various problems. That may be. The first thing anyone who works a little on language, who has translation experience, who has an awareness of the differences between languages, notes is the fact that the perfect translation does not exist and cannot exist. That is why it is said that every translation is somewhat a distortion.

But I personally am still not that pessimistic about translations. One feature of the world we live in is that we encounter different languages more often, and we all share a developed, settled level of awareness of what kind of barriers the difference of language can place between us in reaching understanding. I do not think anyone today, especially when reading a book like the Qur'an from a meal, thinks that the meal reflects the original perfectly. That is why those who do not know Arabic, to the extent that they take the matter seriously, go from one meal to another meal, and from there to another meal. To the extent that they take the matter even more seriously, they also brave the hardship of a journey toward the original, toward the Arabic, even toward the Arabic of 7th-century Mecca-Medina.

Therefore I hope that it is not understood from what I have said above that I am saying that the meal is sufficient. In fact, let alone saying the meal is sufficient, I am not saying even that the Qur'an is sufficient with these remarks. In this matter it is impossible not to give credit to the concerns of the esteemed professor Faruk Beşer.

An approach that says the Qur'an is sufficient and nearly forbids recourse to other sources is, in my view, very far from recognizing the Qur'an as a revealed book. Let us touch on why this is so later, but let us for now finish this matter of the correlation between reading meal and deism.

Whatever anyone says, the Qur'an, even if only because of the hermeneutical limitations of the human being, if not sufficient, is the most important source that builds, nourishes and shapes the intellectual structure of a Muslim subject. This is so for scholars, for the young and the old, for women and men alike. When you remove its centrality by putting forward some ill-intentioned readings, what will inevitably fill its place will be the discourses, again no easier to understand, of the hodja efendis, which can in no way be recorded or accounted for.

As for what the Qur'an suffices for and how much, we can move on more comfortably after expressing this concern.