Mustafa Khattab Quran

[Aide Broeckel]

Today I'm starting a new blog series called The Imago Dei, it means the image of God. I wanted to talk to people from some of the groups that Americans tend to demonize and misunderstand. The people I've interviewed may not think or believe the same things you do, but they all have dignity and value. There is so much we can learn from one another if we are willing to listen.

I traveled to Egypt almost 10 years ago and spent time in the homes of many hospitable Muslim families. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but times have changed and the major sentiment towards the Muslim community in our nation is fear. A few months ago I spoke to Dr. Mustafa Khattab: a Muslim imam who ministers in Toronto Canada. He has recently written a new translation of the Quran (which is the historical Muslim religious text) called the Clear Quran.

I have three brothers and two sisters, and we have a long, long tradition in the village of not going to school, so I was lucky to make it to school. My mother fought for me to get an education. So I'm talking about being the first person in the history of my family, we're talking about hundreds of years here-- I was the first one who was ever educated.

Then I made it into college in Cairo: and I got my bachelors', then my Masters', then my Ph.D, now I'm here in the West teaching about Islam. And my family, they're basically all farmers, they still live in the village in Egypt.

In Egypt we have two types of education. There's the public system: you go there to study science, math, Arabic, and different things. Then there is the Islamic education which is called El-Azhar. The El-Ahzar system is very popular in the Muslim world. People come from different parts of the world, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, to study El-Azhar. So this is where I got my religious training, from the age of seven all the way to getting all the degrees they have.

Normally in the Arab world we don't go by sects; we just call ourselves Muslim. But recently because of political issues and conflicts in the Middle East in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, people have started to identify themselves as either Sunni or Shitte. Technically, what makes a person a Muslim is their belief in the Five Pillars of Islam: to believe that there is only one God and that Muhammad (peace be upon him and all prophets) is a prophet; pray five times a day; fast during Ramadan; give to charity; and go on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

A little bit of history, the reason why we have the two groups is because in the year 632 C.E, when the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and all prophets) passed away, there were two groups who disagreed about who should be the successor of the prophet as the ruler of the Muslim community. So the majority of the Muslims who are now called Sunnis (they make up more that 90% of the Muslim population in the world) they said that the most qualified, the most knowledgeable, and the most righteous man in the community should become the ruler. Then there's the smaller group who are now identified as Shiite. They believe that someone from the prophet's bloodline, namely his cousin or his son-in-law, Ali, should have been the ruler of the Muslim world. This is the reason why they had the disagreement.

To the best of my knowledge, pastors mostly work on Sundays and Wednesdays if there are lectures, but in my case, like many imams, I work 24/7. Especially in the West, because we don't have as many mosques. So when I was in Niagara I was one imam serving 7,000 Muslims. When I was in Edmonton I was serving at least 30,000 Muslims in the city.

My responsibilities are primarily religious. I conduct the Friday services like Sundays for the Christians, the holiday functions, and also when someone dies, I lead their funeral prayers. Then there are the educational duties like teaching lectures, and giving reminders after prayers. If there is a school in the mosque, then I help with curriculum, and I help the teachers, and I give talks to the students.

I also lead tours and do chaplaincy work if my services are needed at the hospitals. I also help with the local colleges if there is a Muslim Student's Association. I go and give them talks and answer their questions. Then there are the social services like marriage, divorce, and counseling. So these are basically the duties I do most of the time.

I'm a Christian, and within Christianity there's a pretty strong message of future dominance. In our Scriptures it says, "Every knee will bow and every tongue will proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord." And in our Scriptures God also promises to crush his enemies. Would you say that similar themes can be found the Quran?

Again, I believe that these are political groups, and for them to win political support from the masses, and for them to have credibility; the easiest way is for them to quote (or rather misquote) the scriptures for their own interests. This is the easiest way for them to build a base for themselves: to use religion as a smokescreen or a disguise for whatever agenda they may have.

Here in the US many people are afraid of terrorist organizations that associate themselves with Islam. Some politicians have suggested that we should fear all Muslims and all immigrants, do you agree?

No, because the same thing was said about the Japanese in WWII, the Italians, and the Germans. And now, many years later, they came to regret and apologize for what they have done. You don't take a whole group and punish them or demonize them because of the actions of a few. If we take the Klu Klux Klan or some Catholics who do certain things-- and you see them in the news all the time-- and you demonize all of Christianity. This would not be fair. My main problem is that in many cases, the actions of some who claim to be Muslim are perceived as representatives of Islam whereas the actions of good Muslims are not.

I don't think so, because the imams that I work with, and the imams that I associate with, teach the true message of Islam. On how to become a good citizen, and how to become a good Muslim at the same time.

I think radical groups and some politicians share the same views that Islam is violent and Muslims are on a mission to dominate the word. They always say that you cannot be a good American and a Muslim at the same time. It's either one or the other, right!? But this doesn't make sense. This is like saying, you can either be a good father or a good husband. I can be both at the same time because there is nothing in Islam that is against being a good citizen. Early Muslims they used to travel, they lived with non-Muslims, and had good relations.

Islam just like any faith is based on two things, your relationship with the creator and your relationship with the creation. So if you look at the Ten Commandments the first four say worship God alone, serve Him alone and so on and so forth. From five to ten, don't kill, don't lie, don't steal--be a good guy.

Every single prophet says the same thing: good relationship with God and good relationship with people--and by extension all of his creations. If you take the golden rule: love God with all you heart and love your neighbor as yourself, it's all about the creator and the creation. So this is what Islam teaches and I've seen a lot of people come to Islam because of the simplicity of the teachings. You can always explain the concepts of Islam. They make sense whereas-- I'm not trying to put down Christianity or anything-- but I've been breaking my head for over thirty years now to understand the concept of the Trinity. It still doesn't make sense to me. Again, the teachings of Islam are very simple: your rights and your obligations. Like in the Ten Commandments: have faith in One God and do good. You communicate directly with your Creator, no intermediaries. Because of its practicality, because of its common sense-- this is why a lot of people find peace in Islam and they are able to understand it and apply it to their lives.

I think this is the first translation done in Canada, and I think I am the youngest person to have translated the Quran at the age of thirty-seven. This is also not actually my first translation. I did one over ten years ago at the age of Twenty-six. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but this is my specialization.

I've been studying this for many years, and I've been in this field for over thirty years. I've read almost every translation the Quran in English of and there are basically two reasons why I decided to translate. I'm not going to talk about non-Muslim translations of the Quran because for over 1,300 years, the Quran was never translated by a Muslim into English.

In 2013, I was in Toronto giving a Friday speech, and I was dressed up in traditional Arab garb. On the way to the hotel I was in the cab with a non-Muslim. If you know about Toronto, there are many cab drivers who are Muslim here, like it's part of being Muslim in Toronto to be a cab driver.

This was the first time and probably the only time where I got a cab and the driver was non-Muslim. I don't normally talk to people about Islam unless they ask me a question, and that day I get a comment from the guy and he said, "Muslims are good people but Islam sucks."

There is a website that gives you forty different translations of the same verse, and the man was right most of them said either animal or beast, but this is not what it says in Arabic. So that day I decided to do my own translation. For the next three years I was immersed in the translation, and I think we have produced probably the most accurate, and the clearest version of the Quran.

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