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Shakir identified

Correspondence with a descendant of ‘Shakir’

Challenge to publishers of Shakir translation to add note about the truth of the matter

In a detailed earlier article, entitled Shakir’s Quran translation — blatant plagiarism of the first edition of Maulana Muhammad Ali’s translation, I summed up my findings about this plagiarism as follows:

“A comparison shows the Shakir translation to be an entire and wholesale plagiarism of the first, 1917, edition of the English translation of the Holy Quran by Maulana Muhammad Ali, with alterations in a few places to reflect more traditional interpretations. Even these alterations have not been made consistently and have obviously been forgotten to be done in some places.”

In the second half of the article I attempted to discover further about the identity of ‘Shakir’ by collating all published information that I could locate. The only specific information available on some book distributors’ websites described Shakir as an Egyptian Judge with some connection to Al-Azhar University who died in 1939. However, I was able to show that:

“It is abundantly clear that the Egyptian Shakir to whom this translation is attributed could not possibly have translated the Quran as he was opposed on religious principle to translating the Quran into any language. … it is most probable that M.H. Shakir is merely a fictitious name, and the name of the Egyptian judge Shakir has no connection with this translation.”

Beyond this, I was unable to identify Shakir any further.

E-mail from Shakir’s great-grandson

It was both surprising and exciting, therefore, to receive an e-mail on 7th March 2006 from one Sadiq Hassan, who wrote that:

“M. Shakir was my great-grandfather, the paternal grandfather of my mother.”

This led to an exchange of e-mails, which in the end was broken off by him. The information provided by Sadiq Hassan in his e-mails was:

1. “His real name was Mohammedali Habib. He took on Shakir as a pen name.”
2. “The late Mr. Mohammedali Habib was well known throughout the country (Pakistan) for having devoted his life to the cause of humanity. He with his brothers founded many educational and benevolent institutions, the most important being Masoomeen Hospital. This translation was completed by him on the 14th Shaban and the very next day he suffered a severe heart attack and passed away on the 20th of Ramadhan, i.e. 30th March 1959.”
3. “M.H. Shakir did not speak Arabic. He supervised the translation of the Quran which was done by a group of people.”

Go here to read our e-mail exchange in more detail.

Shakir identified

Working from this information, I have established that this Mohammedali Habib was the well-known financier who founded the famous Habib Bank of Pakistan. He was a well-known figure in the financial and political circles of Indian Muslims before Partition and in Pakistan after the Partition of 1947.

You can read about him on the website of a business organization called the ‘House of Habib’ by visiting the page:

www.hoh.net/aboutus.htm

and scrolling to the lower section entitled ‘Mohammed Ali Habib, The Builder’.

It is now clear that Mr. Mohammedali Habib got a group of people to go through Maulana Muhammad Ali’s 1917 edition of the English translation of the Quran and make a few verbal changes in places where the Maulana’s translation gave an interpretation differing from the commonly-held one so that it reflected the more generally-accepted view. This was subsequently published, a few years after his death, as the translation of the Quran by M.H. Shakir. The overwhelming bulk of the text of the translation remained the same as in Maulana Muhammad Ali’s 1917 edition.

Publisher’s challenged

Therefore, to call Shakir as the translator of the Quran is even more misleading than I had described in my earlier article. I now press upon all publishers of the so-called Shakir translation, whether in printed form or on websites, to insert a note along the following lines:

“The Shakir translation is to a great extent a verbatim reproduction of Maulana Muhammad Ali’s 1917 edition of the English translation of the Quran. In a few places some verbal changes have been made to express the more traditional interpretations.”

If the publishers of the Shakir work have the least integrity and sense of decency, they will preface their publication with the above note.

— Compiled by Dr. Zahid Aziz

Read earlier article about the Shakir plagiarism

Read e-mail exchange in more detail