Bakhtiar’s argument, which derives from the work of other, more sophisticated Muslim feminist scholars, may seem feeble; certainly her translation (which maddeningly, and for no good reason, inserts “(f)” after every feminine ending in the text) is so poor as to be worthless. But if Islam in its rigid and authoritarian forms is to change, it will change from within, and women are likely to be the most effective agents of that change. There have been women Koran commentators and women experts on tradition, but this is the first time a woman has been bold enough to translate the text itself.
To invoke prophetic tradition, as Bakhtiar (and earlier commentators) do, is to supply context, however tenuously. Context is what is most lacking, however, in almost all translations of the Koran. Khalidi remarks that the Koran employs “an eternal present tense”. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean we must read it that way nowadays. In the passage I quoted earlier, in which Muslims are urged to “kill the polytheists”, ordinary common sense suggests that the verse is best understood as emerging from a moment in which the early Muslim community was outnumbered and threatened by its Meccan opponents, most of whom were indeed polytheists. To construe it in the eternal present is to make of the text a rigid template imposed upon ever-changing historical circumstances.
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