Islam: Translation or Interpretation

In the aftermath of the Boston terrorist attack President Obama said that he wanted to know who did it and why.  I immediately said to myself, "I don't want to know why this was done.  I don't care why it was done.  I just want the guilty party caught."

Then I started to think that maybe there is a reason why these things keep happening.  Why religious fanatics go haywire and commit such horrible atrocities.  What I learned in part, was interesting.

The Koran, which is the holy book of Islam, is written in Arabic.  Arabic is very difficult to translate into English because there are certain concepts being expressed in Arabic that we don't have in our culture.

As with any translation, there are many different versions as each translating team tries to improve on what the text is actually saying.

For example, the Bible has 233 different English translations.  It's been translated into 2,000 different languages.  For the Koran, there are 60 complete translations.

However, none of these are really translations, they are interpretations.  The translator reads the Arabic and then decides how to convey that into English.  At times, there is no way to do this accurately.

All of this make me consider the possibility that these radical Islamic terrorists are reading translations that have been grossly mishandled and have therefore developed radical ideas and beliefs.  They truly believe they are reading the teachings of Islam when really they are only reading the interpretations of a translator that has radical ideas.

This isn't intended to make excuses.  It is helpful however, to gain an understanding of how these terrorists were led down the path they chose to follow.