Bilal Muhammad 2018

This edition, The Quran: Translations Compiled by Members of the Imam W. D. Mohammed Community, is unusual in being a collaborative, evolving compilation rather than the work of a single translator. Edited by A. L. Bilal Muhammad, it began around 2011 by building on Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s classic rendering and then blending in language drawn from Imam W. Deen Mohammed and his students, along with phrasings from Muhammad Asad, Marmaduke Pickthall and a range of online sources. The character of the text is therefore eclectic and English in a contemporary register, consciously shaped to speak to an African-American Muslim readership and updated edition by edition as the community offers new interpretations.

The project reflects the community that grew out of Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s reform of the former Nation of Islam toward mainstream Sunni practice. It is openly participatory: readers are invited to contribute renderings that may be folded into future printings, and related volumes adapt the material for children and new readers.

Because it is a living compilation, the work is best understood as a community devotional resource rather than a fixed scholarly translation. Its strength is its rootedness in a specific congregation’s voice; its corresponding limitation is the unevenness inherent in drawing on many hands and sources.