On Qur'an translations in the Republican period

In the Republican period there was a growing desire and need to know the meaning of the Qur'an. Yet this need was not a demand that began in the Republican period. The strange effect of modernization, together with literacy becoming a mass phenomenon, brought about a change in the nature of religious knowledge and authority as well. For some, this situation is secularization itself, since it brought with it the weakening of religious authority and the gradual collapse, under individual opinions, of its monopoly. The upshot, of course, is also, to some extent, an increase in relativism, a sense of truth that differs for everyone, and the largely lost sphere of religious security.

This is exactly how it played out in the West, and it had a weakening effect on the Catholic and Orthodox authorities of religious knowledge. With the development of the printing press and the spread of the industrial city, the authority of interpretation over the Holy Book was opened to the public as well. Its well-known effect was fierce secularization, deism, even atheism.

Evidently, the positivist elites who gave direction to the Republic had a clear expectation, regarding the translation of the Qur'an into Turkish, that the same would repeat itself in Turkey. The very widespread accounts on this subject show that this intention was by no means imaginary. The expectation was that, once a Turkish rendering of the Qur'an was made, the masses would see with their own eyes how that book, which for years they had unknowingly imagined to be full of miracles, was in fact full of innovations and superstitions.

If one does not believe in the book, how could one understand it? Would this book not, anyway, increase the guidance of some and the misguidance of others?

Perhaps one does not even need to understand in order to believe, but of course the ideal is also to understand the content of the book one believes in. Even in Protestant theology the problem was formulated in this way, and the famous hermeneutician Rudolf Bultmann, for this purpose, undertook the project of demythologizing the Bible so that the book believed in might be better understood. It started a great many debates in Christian philosophical-theological circles, but that is a separate subject.

The expectation of the unbelievers who sought a translation of the Qur'an was that understanding the Qur'an would draw the masses away from believing in it and secularize them; that is why they encouraged Qur'an translations. Were the famous hesitations of Mehmet Akif Ersoy, who was offered the task of producing a rendering, a matter of his being unable to trust that his own good faith could offset this intention, or was it something else? It is open to debate, because the accounts vary.

Of course, in the meantime, as a demand of believers free of this ill intention, a serious demand was also emerging among all Islamic circles to understand what the Book that the Creator sent us as a guide tells us. This demand, again with urbanization, modernization and the rise in literacy, became more of a mass phenomenon. That is why the demand for a Qur'an translation was one that began not in the Republican period but long before, and Hüseyin Kazım Kadri's work called Nûrü'l-Beyân is a result of this cultural atmosphere that had become increasingly impossible to hold back. The objections of the Islamist Sebilürreşad circle to this work were also largely on linguistic grounds.

Through both the criticisms and the answers given to them, we find ourselves in this period confronted with a very valuable, lively case regarding the possibilities and the hermeneutic level of understanding the Qur'an, of its perfect translation, and of what it means for the masses. For one thing, an almost perfect translation seems possible; there is as yet no serious debate on the relation of interpretation or understanding to history, culture and experience, but this influence implicitly shows itself abundantly, and, on the other hand, directly undertaking a Qur'an translation is seen as an act of great courage. That is why H. Kazım presents what he did not as a Qur'an translation but only as a summary translation of Qur'an commentaries.

With this translation of H. Kazım, other translation attempts also began. In the end, at the point we have reached today, a very serious awareness has formed in society about the rendering and exegesis of the Qur'an. Compared with the Ottoman period, the Qur'an is read incomparably more, understood in Turkish, interpreted and commented upon. However, this does not of course mean that the religious policies of the early Republic were of this intention and expectation. The Qur'an being read and interpreted more has to do rather with modernization, with the rising level of literacy, and of course with the religious feeling in society gradually becoming urban.

The modernization and secularization approaches in vogue on this subject may perhaps not like this observation, because for those approaches the past is always better and we are getting worse with every passing day. It is impossible for what comes with modernization to be beneficial. Yet does not this very Noble Book itself say that there may be good in things you regard as evil? Of course this too will need to be discussed at length separately if necessary.

For now, I congratulate Vadi Yayınevi and Bekir Cantemir on this auspicious initiative, through which, with the series of renderings they have begun to publish, they shed light on the discussions of renderings in the Republican period and invite us on this occasion to turn once again to our own self-consciousness.