The Sublime Quran (Laleh Bakhtiar)

The Sublime Quran is an English rendering of the meanings of the Qur'an by Laleh Bakhtiar, first published in 2007, which met notoriety and acclaim in almost equal measure. ¹

Bakhtiar presented the translation as free of any denominational or doctrinal bias, made by a method based on a concordance of Arabic roots rather than on the tafsir literature, and, following formal equivalence as she understood it, without any notes or commentary. ¹ She uses "God" rather than "Allah", arguing that the Qur'an tells the Prophet ﷺ to speak to people in their own language. ¹

Kazi Publications of Chicago, where Bakhtiar had worked as in-house scholar and production manager since 1992, published it in early 2007. ² The book drew coverage in The New York Times, The Times, CNN, Al Jazeera and the BBC, largely for her rendering of the word daraba in that verse as "go away" from a wife rather than "beat"; John Esposito and Reza Aslan praised it, Dave Eggers recommended it as a gift in O magazine at Christmas 2009, and traditionalists objected that she was not a Qur'an scholar. ²

The translation is best known for her rendering of a verse of Surat al-Nisa' on the treatment of a wife, discussed in The New York Times, and it was recommended on Oprah.com in 2009. ¹ Sheam Khan of the University of Leicester argues that taking words out of context produces puzzling renderings and repeated linguistic errors, that the absence of notes leaves it unintelligible in places, and that its method is not applied consistently. ¹ He cites the Islamic law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, who told the Chicago Tribune that Bakhtiar had a reputation as an editor, not an Islamic scholar, and that three years of classical Arabic were not enough. ¹ She was also criticised for claiming hers was the first translation by a Muslim woman, which it was not. ¹

Bakhtiar republished the same text in new forms: The Quranic Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (2015), The Chronological Quran as Revealed to Prophet Muhammad (2016) and a thirty-volume series the same year. She died in 2020; the translation keeps a loyal following. ¹

• Sheam Khan, "Qur'an translation of the week #157", The Global Qur'an, 2023. ¹