As a result of increasing globalisation the public sphere has expanded over the recent decades. Consequently Qur'an translations exhibit a highly pluralised concept of religious authority,... Show moreAs a result of increasing globalisation the public sphere has expanded over the recent decades. Consequently Qur'an translations exhibit a highly pluralised concept of religious authority, demonstrating an eclectic use of sources as authors respond simultaneously to local and global discourses. This paper shows how the commentary in a popularising Swahili tafsir by the preacher Said Moosa al-Kindy on two particular Qur'an verses, Q. 2:185 and Q. 2:189, cannot be understood as the outcome of theological and linguistic considerations only, but rather as a multi-epistemic, socially embedded product. Q. 2:185 and Q. 2:189 are often used to endorse particular viewpoints in East African moon sighting debates. This discourse revolves about the question of whether to accept a crescent sighting report from anywhere in the world to determine the beginning of the lunar month or to wait for a visible moon from a more restricted locality. This paper situates al-Kindy's translation within the wider field of Swahili Qur'an commentaries, and compares his treatment of these verses to that in two scholarly products from outside the established genre of tafsir. One is the polemical discourse on this subject by an Ibadi intellectual writing in Swahili and the second is the lunar calendar and website produced by a Tanzanian book trader. In all three of these works Qur'anic authority is paramount, but if we want to understand the diverse mediations of the Qur'anic message in a specific milieu we should not only look at the influence of exegetical traditions but also focus on social actors and their very personal, localised experiences. Show less
This article examines three Swahili books with the same title Fimbo ya Musa ('The Rod of Moses'), published between 1970 and 2010, each of which critically investigates Qur'an translations and... Show moreThis article examines three Swahili books with the same title Fimbo ya Musa ('The Rod of Moses'), published between 1970 and 2010, each of which critically investigates Qur'an translations and vernacular religious texts in Swahili. The first Fimbo was written by the Kenyan Ahmad Ahmad Badawy and criticises one of the earliest Swahili Qur'an translations, by Abdullah Saleh al-Farsy. In the second, Nurudin Hussein Shadhuly, head of the Shadhuly/Yashrutiyya ?ufi branch in Tanzania examines and condemns the translation efforts by Saidi Musa, a student of al-Farsy. The final Fimbo is a treatise by the Ibai scholar Juma al-Mazrui from Oman and digitally distributed in 2010 which deals with the doctrine of God's visibility in the hereafter and is an answer to the Salafiyya Tanzanian Kassim Mafuta's 2008 work on this topic. The example of these three polemics over the last four decades shows the shifting concerns in the reaction to the translated Qur'an in Swahili. The act of translation from Arabic to the vernacular is no longer attacked, but rather the theological implications of a deficient translation are at the heart of the more recent discussions. While authoritative knowledge is still associated with a high command of Arabic, affiliation to a particular school of law or intellectual genealogy is not. Religious learning is no longer primarily transmitted through well-established links of personal authorities, but can increasingly be derived from private study and reading. As a direct result of this opening up of a wide field of knowledge for a non-Arabic reading audience, the potential numbers of discussants increases: each new Swahili Qur'an translation reveals more of the enigmatic character of the Qur'an and fuels new debates. Show less
