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Offline Adil Husain

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Translation by MAS ABDEL HALEEM 

1:6 Guide us to the straight path

1:7 the path of those you have blessed , those who incur no anger(1)  and who have not gone stray.

(1)- note that the verb is not attributed to God as it is in many translation.

I want to ask that which translation is more correct , Abdel haleem's  or all other major translations. I used corpus.quran but i cant figure it out .
We use this surah in our daily prayers and i offer it in my mother tongue , so it becomes important to know it .
Thank you.
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Offline Wakas

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AFAIK the arabic literally says: "path of those You have bestowed/favoured on them not those who received anger on them and not those who go astray"

l-maghḍūbi is genitive masculine passive participle, meaning they received the action expressed in the verb. The question arises: received anger from where/whom/what?

Offline Joseph Islam

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Translation by MAS ABDEL HALEEM 

1:6 Guide us to the straight path

1:7 the path of those you have blessed , those who incur no anger(1)  and who have not gone stray.

(1)- note that the verb is not attributed to God as it is in many translation.

I want to ask that which translation is more correct , Abdel haleem's  or all other major translations. I used corpus.quran but i cant figure it out .
We use this surah in our daily prayers and i offer it in my mother tongue , so it becomes important to know it .
Thank you.

Salamun Alaikum

I think Abdel Haleem actually makes a valid linguistic argument and I feel it is important to appreciate what wider underlying point he may be trying to make.

With regards 'al-maghdubi' his elucidatory note [f] says: 

"f - Note that the verb here is not attributed to God, as it is in many translations."

With regards explicit attribution to God within the text of the verse 'ghayri l-maghdubi (alayhim)', in my humble view, Abdel Haleem's view is correct.  The action ‘ghaDiba’ (verb) means ‘to become angry’ and therefore the ‘al-maghdub’ (noun) are those ‘who earned anger’. The ‘One who became angry’ is not explicitly defined linguistically. The ‘One who became angry’ is only derived from the context of the verse to be God.

Hence, Abdel Haleem is correct from what I understand he is trying to say.

With regards, 'al-maghdubi' being in the passive form and to be read in the past, we need to be a little careful here what we mean by this.

Wakas is correct that the passive participial phrase implies that the action is complete on the object (i.e. they have received the wrath – those ‘that have earned anger’) and the subsequent question 'whom', 'where' etc is apt in my humble opinion.

The Quran does not define this and who they are i.e. which people / present / past (and by implication of the language, potentially anyone).

However, it is very important to remember that this particular verse is subject to immense 'bias' from Islamic secondary sources that attempt to create 'two categories of people' and pin these attributes to them. One category being the Jews and other, the Christians. There is no warrant for this in the Quran which does not deal with the question of whom / where.   

I hope this helps, God willing.
Joseph.






UPDATE BY QM FORUM MODERATOR

13th March 2013

This thread is now closed and a direct link to this post is now available at the dedicated Q&A page.

http://quransmessage.com/articles/q&as%20FM3.htm

Thanks.
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