To:
Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
University Professor, The George Washington University msirat@gwu.edu
From:
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Subject:
Your silence when Laleh
Bakhtiar is selling her ignorant translation of the Holy Qur'an by
drawing association to your name is silent endorsement
Date:
Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 11:20 AM
Dear
Dr. Nasr,
Assalaam
Alekum,
The
following letter was sent to Kazi Publications in Chicago, the
distributors of Laleh Bakhtiar's
translation of the Holy Qur'an titled The Sublime Quran. As
you can glean in the letter, your evaluation of the translation is
nowhere to be found. Your silence, and absence of challenge to the
translation, is an endorsement by default in the mind of many people.
Therefore,
I would like to request your public comment on her translation. As
just an ordinary human being who has looked at the translation and
found it not only wanting in fidelity to the original,
but its author seemingly pursuing an agenda which by her own
admission is to “bring reform to
Islam”, what worldly considerations hold an
expert back when the word of God perfected by the statement 5:3 of
the Holy Qur'an and revered by 1.6 Billion Muslims, is targeted
for "reform"? As you are well aware, that agenda is shared
by Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, and the late Samuel Huntington et.
al., all circus clowns beating the Hegelian Dialectic "militant
Islam" vs. "moderate Islam" to “bring
reform to Islam”. The import of this shared
message is deconstructed in my article: Hijacking
the word 'Islam' for Mantra Creation.
Please
review the following correspondence with Kazi Publishers and you will
realize why your silence must be broken. When scholars of Islam
remain silent, us poor plebeians have to take up their slack with
limited or zero impact. As you are well aware, the world today bows
before “experts” – even when they spew garbage. The
Muslim condition today is the most deplorable of any time in history
– our pulpits are today almost universally occupied by such
“experts”. In that milieu, when genuine knowledgeable
experts speak, their opinion carries far for people pay attention –
just as they pay attention to useful idiots and mercenaries. When a
genuine expert's name is used to draw associations and credibility to
oneself, the expert's silence is aiding and abetting those who do so.
And when such scholars also remain silent when the religion is being
abused, they condemn themselves by their silence. The test of
integrity is daily, constant, and al Furqan invites us to this
test daily, constantly, by [inter alia] nahin anil munkar and
amar bil maroof.
Most
Sincerely,
Zahir
Ebrahim
Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
California
Enclosure:
Letter
to the Distributor of Laleh Bakhtiar's Translation of the Holy Qur'an
By Zahir Ebrahim
Source URL:
http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/08/letter-nasr-silence-translation-quran.html
Print URL:
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/08/letter-nasr-silence-translation-quran.html
Link
fix November 11, 2016
Letter to S H Nasr on his silence
on Laleh Bakhtiar's Translation of the Holy Qur'an By Zahir Ebrahim