Copyright

Mykhaylo Yakubovych

Published On

2024-02-08

Page Range

pp. 35–54

Language

  • English

Print Length

20 pages

2. The Muslim World League

A Forerunner to International Translational daʿwa Networks

Chapter of: The Kingdom and the Qur’an: Translating the Holy Book of Islam in Saudi Arabia(pp. 35–54)
Chapter Two, entitled ‘The Muslim World League: A Forerunner to International Translational daʿwa Networks’, outlines the history and impact of one of the earliest Saudi Muslim organisations dedicated to translation, The Muslim World League (MWL), which was established in 1962. It traces the emergence of the idea of ‘approved’ or ‘authorised’ Muslim-authored translations of the Qur’an, originally in terms of the adoption and production of pre-existing translations as well as the later commissioning of projects that led to new, bespoke translations. Although the Muslim World League only produced four completely new translations (if one does not count the translations produced as a result of some of its later collaborative projects), its activities represented the first instance of Saudi state intervention in Qur’an translation, motivated by both political and religious factors.

Contributors

Mykhaylo Yakubovych

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8305-1166

Mykhaylo Yakubovych (born 1986 in Ostroh, Ukraine) obtained his PhD in 2011 from The National University of Ostroh Academy with a study on interreligous relations in medieval Sunni traditionalism. Currently a member of the research team on the ERC-funded project ‘GloQur—The Global Qur’an’ (University of Freiburg, Germany), he studies Qur’an translations produced by international institutions and publishers, with a focus on Central Asian and Eastern European languages. He is the author of an annotated translation of the Qur’an into Ukrainian (first published in 2013), along with several books and translations from Arabic, and many research articles published in academic journals from the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. Yakubovych has conducted several academic projects on the Islamic manuscript heritage, including the post-classical intellectual history of the Crimean Khanate (at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, USA) and sixteenth-seventeenth century Qur’an interpretations produced by Lithuanian Tatars (at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland).