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The Wahhabi Koran Targets Jews and Christians

(Weekly Standard) Stephen Schwartz - The U.S. State Department recently welcomed a group of professors of religion from Saudi Arabia, led by five scholars from the Imam Mohammed Ibn-Saud Islamic University, a seminary for the training of clerics in Wahhabism. This institution was the alma mater of three of the 9/11 suicide hijackers. The most obvious window into the theology taught at Ibn-Saud Islamic University is the Wahhabi Koran, an edition of the Islamic scripture, with commentary, printed in every major European, Asian, and African language in paperback editions that are distributed free or at low cost throughout the world. The Wahhabi Koran is notable in that, while Muslims believe that their sacred text was dictated by God and cannot be altered, the Saudi English version adds to the original so as to change its sense in a radical direction. For example, the four final lines of the opening chapter, Fatiha, recited in Muslim daily prayer, read, in a normal rendition: Guide us to the straight path, / The path of those whom You have favored, / Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, / Nor of those who have gone astray. The Wahhabi Koran renders these lines: Guide us to the Straight Way. / The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). The Wahhabi Koran prints this translation alongside the Arabic text, which contains no reference to either Jews or Christians.
2004-09-21 00:00:00
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