التعارض بين الحقائق العلمية الحديثة والقرآن الكريم في سياق الترجمة الخاطئة لمعانيه: دراسة في الأسباب والدوافع

The Contradiction between Modern Scientific Facts and the Holy Qur’an in the Context of Mistranslation of its Meanings: A study of Motives and Causes

Abstract

The dilemma of conflict between religion and science in the context of dialectical discourse constituted an "obsession" among thinkers and clerics in various philosophies and religions since ancient times, and the error in translating the meanings of the Qur’an at the intersection between the Qur’anic text and modern scientific facts, may intensify this dilemma. Maurice Bucaille (d.1998) has always emphasized this particular problem in more than one place and made it one of the obstacles to the Islamic call recently in the West, rather he claimed - with an apprehensive look - that the motive for the error is subjective and intentional. The significance of this study lies in correcting the position of the Qur’an towards modern scientific facts in the context of the correct translation. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to identify the topical and objective translational problems of the cosmic and natural verses, whether at the linguistic level of the translated text or at the translator’s epistemological and ethical level, in order to confirm Maurice Bucaille’s claim on the motives and reasons of errors. By implementing the analytical and comparative method and applying the critical approach on translating some verses by translators with different doctrinal backgrounds towards the Qur’an on the one hand, and those with different levels of knowledge on the other, We have concluded that the causes of errors are mainly due to the complex linguistic nature of the Qur’an as an internal reason, and the modest scientific balance of some translators in the field of cosmology and naturalism as an external reason, just as all the translation errors which we studied in this article were inevitable and spontaneos, However, the self-motivation and selective behavior towards some mistranslations of those who stand on the opposite side of the Islamic discourse do exist, but in the field of ideological debate far from the official translations of the Qur’an in what appears.