Dr. Mohammad Tahir-ul-Qadri

Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Irfan-ul-Quran is a self-consciously devotional rendering, first completed in Urdu in 2005 and later issued in an English version under the title The Glorious Quran. Its defining feature is register: rather than aiming for clipped literalism, it adopts a reverential, idiomatic tone and freely folds short interpretive expansions into the running text so that the meaning reads smoothly without recourse to dense footnotes. Because explanatory glosses are absorbed into the translation itself, the work carries something of the quality of a brief exegesis, reflecting the Sufi and Barelvi sensibility of its author and his stated wish that the Qur’an’s message reach ordinary readers in clear, dignified language.

Tahir-ul-Qadri is a Pakistani scholar, prolific author and the founder of Minhaj-ul-Quran International, a movement with a wide following among traditionalist Sunnis. The translation has appeared in Arabic-with-Urdu and Arabic-with-English editions, alongside audio and digital formats, and has been promoted heavily through his organisation’s publishing arm.

Readers within his tradition value the warmth and accessibility of the phrasing; the corresponding caution, as with any expansive interpretive style, is that the added words can narrow meanings the Arabic leaves more open, and that the rendering reflects a particular theological orientation.