Muhammad Sarwar

Muhammad Sarwar’s The Holy Qur’an: Arabic Text and English Translation is marked by plain, accessible modern English. Rather than reaching for archaic diction or close literalism, Sarwar paraphrases the meaning in a lucid, straightforward style meant to be read easily by a contemporary audience, including those new to the text. The apparatus is light and the priority throughout is clarity and readability over word-for-word fidelity, which makes it a smooth reading edition more than a study text.

Sarwar is a Pakistani-born American scholar of Islamic theology and philosophy and was the first North American representative of the late Ayatollah Abul-Qasim al-Khoei to Shia Muslims in the region. His translation, which first appeared in the early 1980s, has gone through multiple editions and is widely circulated within Twelver Shia communities; it has been made broadly available, including as a free digital download in Arabic-and-English and English-only formats.

Critical discussion is modest, as is common for accessible devotional editions. Its strength is approachability for everyday readers; the principal cautions are that its paraphrastic method can blur finer shades of the Arabic, and that its interpretive choices reflect the translator’s Twelver Shia background.