Divine Origin of Rashad's translation

 

 

Divine Origin of Rashad's translation

  A study in Rashad Khalifa’s concept of revelation by the Final Testament.

 

Dr. Rashad Khalifa titled his translation of the Qur’an, “ The Final Testament: Authorized English Version.”  What did Dr. Khalifa mean when he said his translation was “authorized”?  What was Dr. Khalifa’s self-conception of the translating process and what role did he claim God played in it?  In essence we want to see what role Dr. Khalifa attributed to revelation or wahi in the translation process. We will examine the views of students of Dr. Khalifa and examine them in the light of Dr. Rashad Khalifa’s own words.  It will be argued that modern day followers of Dr. Khalifa have attempted to downplay the Messenger of the Covenant’s self-conception in order to save face.

 

 

Dr. Rashad Khalifa infamously titled his translation as “authorized.” The question any sensible person would ask to Dr. Khalifa and his followers  is who “authorized” the translation?  The title “authorized” reeks of arrogance and many open-minded individuals are turned off.  Most people will conclude that Dr. Khalifa believed God authorized his translation of the Qur’an. But what is the truth of this? Does the title “authorized” mean that God told Dr. Khalifa the translation has divine approval? Did Dr. Khalifa make such a claim?  We were unable to find any reference to Dr. Khalifa discussing what he meant by “authorized” anywhere. But we do have information from his followers. The editorial team at  Submission.org implicitly denies Dr. Khalifa of claiming any affirmative revelation on the translation:

 

“Dr. Khalifa called his translation of the Quran "Authorized English version." In doing so, he was clearly declaring his defiance to any man-made authority in giving the permission to translate the Quran, such as those called Islamic councils, committees, government agents or centers. Many of these places consider themselves as having a monopoly on giving the authorization to translate the Quran. Dr. Khalifa flatly rejected such man-made authorization and strongly believed that such authorization belongs only to the author of the Quran Himself, God.”( Biography of Dr. Rashad Khalifa. Submission.org)

 

According to students of Dr. Khalifa, the messenger of the covenant created the title “authorized English version” as a “defiance” against man-made authority.  They see Dr. Khalifa’s motive as that of being a rebel against the mulvis in the same way that Jesus Christ, pbuh, went against the authority of the Pharisees. In both cases we see the story of a sage using earthly wisdom to destroy the arguments of the wealthy arrogant clerics that claimed authority in the name of God. In this case of Dr. Khalifa we have a story that he was using his own translation against the “authorized” translations used by mainstream orthodox islam.  In the Islamic world ordinations are issued by clerics to give authority for various religious sciences such as ruling on jurisprudence, teaching Qur’an recitation, etc. So Dr. Khalifa is a certain Robinhood going against the powers that be.

 

The modern students of Dr. Khalifa deny that Dr. Khalifa believed every word of his translation is the word of God. The writers at Submission.org acknowledge mistakes in the translation various times. Edip Yuksel also denies the translation is inerrant and found errors in at least 30 places of Dr. Khalifa’s work.  Edip Yuksel as well as people from the Submitter’s group acknowledge that Dr. Khalifa consulted them in the translation process.  Dr. Khalifa’s translation was published three times and each time students helped Dr. Khalifa decide the best terms to use. Dr. Rashad Khalifa acknowledged the help of his friends inside the “Final Testament” as well.  The fact that there were errors, revisions, and consultations in the translation process would make it obvious that God was not dictating the translation to Dr. Khalifa in the same way that Joseph Smith dictated the book of Mormon during his translation process.   

 

Let it be said that this author has no problem with Dr. Khalifa or anyone else going against the authority of the sale authority that puts  itself under the name “orthodoxy” to silence it’s opponents.  We believe that Dr. Khalifa was right in challenging Orthodoxy because the Islamic world lacks intellectual discussion and exists in the world lacking in the development of science and culture.  Our agreement ends here however.

 

The mythology built by followers of Dr. Khalifa certainly does not have a structure, as precise as a mathematical one, to stand on. In the first place the translations popular in the Muslim world like Yusuf Ali, Pikthall, and etc, that happen to be the same ones Rashad critiqued, were never authorized by any clerics. The popular translations were basically used by people as ones even considered “authorized” or made by Islamic scholars were considered few and too academic for layman consumption.  Moreover, the claim that Dr. Khalifa was a maverick challenging the establishment is strongly reminiscence of his claim owing to his downfall. Rashad and his followers believe that Dr. Khalifa was outcasted for rejecting hadith but in reality he was outcasted when he taught the date for the end of the world during his “mathematical miracle” tour of the Muslim world.

 

Edip Yuksel had a different explanation for Dr. Khalifa’s use of the word “authorized.” Edip says “I agree with him that his translation was authorized by God through discovery of the code and for its clear emphasis on serving God alone and not adding any other sources (including Rashad’s) to God’s word, which is perfect and fully detailed.”(Is Rashad's Translation of the Quran Error-free? 19.org)  Yuksel shares the view that Khalifa’s translation is not infallible. Yuksel sees the general discovery of the math “miracle” in the Qur’an as giving legitimacy to the title of being “authorized” by God. But despite Yuksel’s claim, the question remains , who authorized the translation?  Did God tell Dr. Khalifa it was authorized because of his hard work in discovering the mathematical miracle?

 

Edip Yuksel argues that “authorized” is a term Dr. Khalifa used to assert the discover of the math-miracle claim. The editorial board of Submission.org holds Khalifa used the term “authorized” merely as a way to show spite at the mulvis.  But both of these explanations are very different from each other. The explanations by Yuksel and Submission.org for the “authorized” are not the same.  We also see that the explanations provided by both parties are weak due to the half-truths and lack of clarity put in them.  The assertions of Yuksel and Submission.org were made after the fact (of Dr. Khalifa’s demise) and do not try to base it on any evidence. In other words, both explanations are merely conjecture.

 

Given the fact that  Submission.org and Yuksel failed to provide a convincing explanation, we should seek assistance for our enquiry with Dr. Rashad Khalifa himself.  The “Authorized” translation and the Muslim Perspective newsletters do not offer any explanations of the use of the term “authorized.” However, we managed to find Dr. Rashad Khalifa give an audio recorded statement explaining the term “authorized” that will suffice to answer our enquiry. It is available on youtube and taken from one of Dr. Khalifa’s Quran study session which he had with his followers till the end of his life. Please click here for the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTguaZuVJO4

 

The audio for the Quran study session was recorded on January 25, 1990. The discussion in questions begins after a sermon by one of Dr. Khalifa’s followers.  At one point a female student with a heavy Persian accent engages Dr. Khalifa in an intense discussion. It is evidence from the audio recording that some time earlier Dr. Khalifa claimed his translation was infallible. The student notes that Dr. Khalifa’s translation was published and revised three times. She then asks Dr. Khalfia a pointed question,” was there any mistake in your first translation?.”    Dr. Khalifa’s answer to the question is most astounding, “"Every word here is the word of God. This is not my word. This i not my translation, this is God's translation.”

 

As we can see, Dr. Khalifa ascribed divine revelation to his authorized Qur’an. Every word of the translation is from God according to Dr. Khalifa. As the audio moves forward Dr. Khalifa gives an explanation for the translation process in order to prove it is divine origin. Dr. Khalifa compares the translation process to the descent of revelation to the Prophet Muhammad over the 23 year life span of his prophetic career.

 

Does Dr. Khalifa’s explanation over the divine revelation in the translation process make sense? Dr. Khalifa attempted to argue that it was “natural” to divine revelation for there to be updated revisions in the translation process from the first edition of the “authorized” Quran to the subsequent and next-subsequent edition.  This gradual change in the translation was compared to the gradual revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad.  This explanation lacks any merit however.  Dr. Khalifa wants us to believe that the  “revelation” of his translation became more and more clear to him in subsequent editions.  In the case of the Prophet Muhammad he received different revelations over a period of time. But Dr. Khalifa wants us to believe that the revelations of the Qur’an became more clear to him in a gradual manner over the 23 year career!  There is no basis to this claim. If Dr. Khalifa gave this explanation to people more learned (than his followers) then they would question to stupidity of the assertion.  The verses of the Qur’an were revealed not all at once but over a 23-year period of time. There is no dispute about what the gradual revelation means in any historical source.   If Dr. Khalifa was a serious scholar he would have at least tried to challenge the traditional assertion but he does not either know the common explanation or is simply deceiving his followers intentionally. In any case it is evident that his followers are unaware of the problem or have been brainwashed to believe everything Dr. Khalifa stated.

 

There is no dispute that Dr. Rashad Khalifa claimed his translation process to be divine in origin and that every word of his translation was from God through revelation.  Any explanation for the term “authorized” should be from Dr. Khalifa himself first and only his followers second.  When Dr. Rashad Khalifa said his translation was “authorized” he meant that God “authorized” it.  Is there any reason to dispute this?

 

Why did the students of Dr. Khalifa in the Submitter community and individuals like Edip Yuksel not acknowledge this fact of Rashad’s claimed revelatory experience?  Why did Yuksel and Submission.org give explanations inconsistent with Dr. Khalifa’s own statements. Both Edip Yuksel and the people in charge of Submission.org were present for the Khutab and subsequent discussion recorded in the video so they were well-aware of what Dr. Khalifa claimed.   It is inconceivable that either Yuksel or his former colleagues would forget such statements.  Edip Yuksel and the surviving submitter community had knowledge of Dr. Rashad Khalifa’s claims but choose to ignore it.

 

The claim of Dr. Khalifa to receiving revelation was one among a number of claims Rashad stated over the years.  Dr. Khalifa claimed a number of prophecies, knowledge of eternal destinies, that  he was the Imam Mahdi in addition to the messenger of the covenant and also the appointed leader of the world, aside from claiming revelation of the angel Gabriel. But we would not know about most of these claims if we turned to Edip Yuksel’s website, masjid Tuscon’s domain or submission.org.   Yet all these claims can be found in old newsletters from Muslim Perspectives. The students of Dr. Khalifa downplayed Rashad’s claims and instead try to narrow their founder’s ideology to being about “Qur’an alone.”  While Dr. Rashad Khalifa certainly advocated “Quran alone” in his discourse that did not stop him from making claims nor did he conceive of it has a contradiction.  But these claims were certainly nothing but embarrassment for  Submission.org or people who wanted to claim Dr. Khalifa was a “reformer” of islam.  The notion that Dr. Khalifa received revelation to translate the Qur’an (given the errors inside the 3 editions) fits tightly with other claims downplayed by Rashad’s heirs. The fact that Dr. Khalifa acknowledged assistance in his translation work did not hinder from making claims to divine intervention.

 

Dr. Rashad Khalifa clearly wanted people to believe that his translation was revealed by God and that it was “not a translation” to begin with since the origin was divine.  The explanation by Dr. Khalifa himself tells us what he titled his English translation as “Authorized.”  The explanations by Submitters and Yuksel are inconsistent with Dr. Khalifa’s own explanation of the translation process.  Just as Dr. Khalifa failed to give an explanation for the discrepancy between his own take of the Prophet’s gradual revelation and the historical accounts, the followers Rashad also failed to account for the discrepancy between their explanations and that of Dr. Khalifa himself.   Given that Dr. Khalifa’s students were present to hear the ‘messenger’s claims it would be difficult to see their explanations as anything but deception.