Li-qawmin yatafakkarūn (Q. 30:21): Muhammad Asad's Qur'anic Translatorial Habitus

Abstract

Recent decades have seen a focus on the translator as a socialised individual as one approach favoured in Translation Studies. Scholars have employed sociological concepts such as habitus (socio-cultural conditioning) and field (environment) as methodological tools in empirical translation research, yielding new and interesting perspectives on the process of translation. In the field of Qur'an hermeneutics, however, such methodological tools have not been applied systematically. The present article constitutes an initial attempt to address this omission, by delineating Muhammad Asad's habitus against the backdrop of his socio-political, cultural, and intellectual background in order to explore the significance of its impact on his The Message of the Qur'an. It will contextualise Asad's rendition of the Qur'an into English through comparative critical intertextual and paratextual analysis, thereby introducing the ‘realm of sociology of translation’, a Translation Studies perspective, into Qur'anic studies.