Translating the Qur'an in an Age of Nationalism

Brett Wilson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College. He holds a PhD in Religion with a specialization in Islamic Studies from Duke University. His scholarship has appeared in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Islamic Studies, and The Encyclopaedia of Women in Islamic Cultures.

• Introduction ; 1. 'The Mother of Civilisation': The Printing Press and Illegal Qur'ans ; 2. Ottoman Editions of the Qur'an ; 3. Vernacular Commentaries and the New Intellectuals ; 4. The Politicization of Qur'anic Translation: From the New Arabism to the Young Turks ; 5. Translation and the Nation ; 6. Caliph and Qur'an: English Translations, Egypt Debates, and the Search for a Centre ; 7. The Elusive Turkish Qur'an ; Conclusion: The Ubiquitous Modern Qur'an ; Bibliography

Wilson's book is a rare example of scholarship in which the fields of Islamic Studies and Ottoman/Turkish intellectual history converge together. His use of archival sources, publications, and texts in Turkish and Arabic enables the author to link Ottoman/Turkish intellectual history with that of the larger Islamic world...Translating the Qur'an is a must-read for those who want to explore the issue of the 'Turkish Qur'an' in its wider context, as well as related debates about the need for Islamic reform as a necessary element of modernisation and progress in the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.