Edip Yüksel

The Quran: A Reformist Translation (2007), produced by Edip Yüksel with Layth Saleh al-Shaiban and the Arabic specialist Martha Schulte-Nafeh, is among the most openly polemical of modern English versions. Its method follows from a Quranist premise: the translators reject the authority of hadith and of the traditional schools of law, and insist that the Qur’an be read in the light of itself and of reason alone. The translation therefore comes wrapped in heavy commentary and appendices that argue for egalitarian, non-sexist and non-sectarian readings, and that revisit verses on women, punishment and authority. It is also shaped by Yüksel’s long association with the ‘‘code 19’’ theory, the claim that a mathematical structure built on the number nineteen underlies the text.

Yüksel is a Turkish-Kurdish-American author and activist who was imprisoned in Turkey in the 1980s and later described a decisive break from his earlier Sunni outlook. The work is explicitly addressed to reform-minded and skeptical readers rather than to the traditional mosque audience.

Reception has been sharply divided: admirers welcome its challenge to inherited authority, while mainstream scholars reject both its dismissal of hadith and its numerological framework, and regard many of its renderings as driven by argument rather than philology.