Translating Arab Women Academics: The Case of Olfa Youssef’s Ḥayratu Muslimah

Abstract

Combining the insight of Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira’s poetics of transcreation; Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere’s rapprochement between cultural studies, translation studies, and globalization; and Mona Baker’s recent scholarship on translating dissent in the Egyptian Revolution, this chapter examines not only the translator’s double role as translator and transcreator of Olfa Youssef’s original reading of the Qur’an from Arabic into English, but also the various challenges the author encountered while trying to introduce into the Anglophone world this Tunisian scholar’s groundbreaking work Ḥayratu Muslimah (Perplexity of a Muslim Woman). This chapter’s main thesis is that translation from Arabic into English is a patriarchal enterprise, and any attempt to translate beyond the parameters of that hom(m)osexual exchange is a subversive act of political intervention.

Appendices

Appendix

List of scholarly books in Islamic Studies Translated into English between 2000 and 2016 by Routledge, Fordham University Press, University of Texas Press, The Feminist Press, Basic Books, Syracuse University Press, Arkansas University Press, University of Minnesota Press, Oxford University Press, Transaction Publishers, and al Saqi Books. ²⁷ They are presented here in chronological order. If published in the same year, they are listed alphabetically.

Author’s name and gender	Title	Name of publisher and date of publication	Original language	Translator’s name and gender
Fatima Mernissi (1940–2015), female	Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World.	Basic Books, 2002	French	Mary Jo Lakeland, female
Meddeb Abdelwahāb (1946–2014), male	The Malady of Islam	Basic Books, 2003	French	Pierre Joris (male) and Ann Reid female
Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), male	A Child from the Village	Syracuse University Press, 2004	Arabic	John Calvert, male
Ahmed ibn Abī Diyāf (1804–1874), male	Consult Them in the Matter: A 19th Century Islamic Argument for Constitutional Government	Arkansas University Press, 2005	Arabic	Leon Carl Brown, male
Al Tāhir al Ḥaddād (1899–1935), male	Muslim Women in Law and Society: Annotated translation of al Tahir al-Ḥaddād’s Imra ‘tunā fi ‘l-shari’a wa ‘l-mujtama’, with an Introduction.	Routledge, 2007	Arabic	Ronak Husni (female) and Daniel L. Newman male
Meddeb Abdelwahāb (1946–2014), male	Tombeau of Ibn ‘Arabī and White Traverses.	Fordham University Press, 2009	French	Charlotte Mandell, female
Fethī Benslāma (1951–), male	Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam	University of Minnesota Press, 2009	French	Robert Bononno, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 22	Oxford University Press, 2010	Arabic	Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor, male
Hichēm Djaït (1935–), male	Islamic Culture in Crisis: A Reflection on Civilizations in History	Transaction Publishers, 2010	French	Janet Fūli, female
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On Logic An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 10–14	Oxford University Press, 2010	Arabic	Carmela Baffioni, female
Salīm Ibn Dhakwān (sixth to seventh centuries), male	The Epistle of Salīm Ibn Dhakwān	Oxford University Press, 2011	Arabic	Patricia Crone (female) and Fritz Zimmerman male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On Music: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 5	Oxford University Press, 2011	Arabic	Owen Wright, male
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić (1948–), male	On the Other: A Muslim View	Fordham University Press, 2011	Bosnian and Arabic	Desmond Maurer male
Rifa'a Rafī' al-Tahtāwī (1801–1873), male	An Imam in Paris: Al Tahtāwī’s Visit to France Cleric (1826–1831)	Al Saqi Books, 2011	Arabic	Daniel L. Newman, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On Magic I: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 52a	Oxford University Press, 2012	Arabic	Godefroid de Callataÿ and Bruno Halflants, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On Arithmetic and Geometry: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 1 & 2	Oxford University Press, 2013	Arabic	Nader El Bizri, male
Abdelwahāb Meddeb (1946–2014), male	Islam and the Challenge of Civilization	Fordham University Press, 2013	French	Jane Kuntz, female
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On Geography An Arabic Edition and English Translation of Epistle 4	Oxford University Press, 2014	Arabic	Ignacio Sanchez and James Montgomery, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On the Natural Sciences: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 15–21	Oxford University Press, 2014	Arabic	Carmela Baffioni, female
Djaït, Hichēm (1935–), male	The Life of Muhammad: Revelation and Prophecy	The Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, 2014	French	Janet Fūli, female
Alī ibn Tāhir al-Sulamī (d 1106), male	The Book of the Jihād of 'Alī ibn Tāhir al-Sulamī	Routledge, 2015	Arabic	Niall Christie, male
Ibn Arabī (1165–1240), male	Ibn Al-Arabī's Fuṣūṣ al Hikam: An Annotated Translation of “The Bezels of Wisdom”	Routledge, 2015	Arabic	Binyamin Abrahamov, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On ‘Astronomia’: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 3	Oxford University Press, 2015	Arabic	F. Jamil Ragep and Taro Mimura, male
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) [980–1037], male	The ‘Metaphysica’ of Avicenna: A Critical Translation-Commentary and Analysis of the Fundamental Arguments in Avicenna's 'Metaphysica' Dānish nāma-i 'alā'ī ('The Book of Scientific Knowledge')	Routledge, 2016	Persian	Parviz Morewedge, male
Badī’ Al Zamān al Hamadhānī (969–1008), male	The Maqāmāt of Badī’ Al Zamān al Hamadhānī	Routledge, 2016 Originally published in 1915 by Luzac & Co.	Arabic	William Joseph Prendergast, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	On Companionship and Belief: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 43–45	Oxford University Press, 2016	Arabic	Toby Mayer, Ian Richard Netton, and Sāmer F. Traboulsī, male
The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā) [tenth century], male	Sciences of the Soul and Intellect, Part I An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 32–36	Oxford University Press, 2016	Arabic	Paul E. Walker, David Simonowitz, Ismail K., and Godefroid de Callataÿ, male

Notes

• 1. Article 230 was introduced in Tunisia by the French in 1913 and was extensively modified in 1964 after the country’s independence (Rayman 2013).

• 2. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Arabic and French are mine.

• 3. See, for example, the intervention of Tunisian actor and playwright Rajā Farḥāt on Radio CAPFM, in which he openly stated that homosexuality had always existed in Arabo-Islamic civilization (Farḥāt). See also online article “Tunisie 2016.”

• 4. Besides writing herself in French, some of Youssef’s work has been translated into French, namely her 2010 book Shawq: Qirāʼah fī arkān al Islām (Desire: Spiritual and Psychological Dimensions of the Pillars of Islam). See Youssef (2012).

• 5. See “Liberating Calibans: Readings of Antropofagia and Haroldo de Compos,” in Basnett and Triverdi (1999, 95–113).

• 6. See “Composing the Other,” in Basnett and Triverdi (1999, 75–94).

• 7. This work was translated into French. See Youssef (2012).

• 8. These works by Youssef have been published only in Arabic. The translations of the titles are my own and are provided for the reader's convenience. The reader may find the original titles in the list of references.

• 9. For more details about Olfa Youssef’s biography and scholarship, see Youssef (2017).

• 10. Although she supported Nidā Tūnis Party in the recent 2014 elections, Youssef soon became one of its prominent critics because of its alliance with the Islamist Party Ennahda and failure to solve the problems of unemployment, inflation, poverty, regional disparities, and terrorism.

• 11. For more details, see the preface of my translation (Youssef 2017).

• 12. For more details, see my English translation (Youssef 2017).

• 13. Here I am using the term “Muslim Middle East” because it is historically the geographic center for the development of Islamic traditions.

• 14. For more information, see my English translation (Youssef 2017).

• 15. There are a few translations by Muslim women , but they are hardly known. See Bakhtiar (2009). UCLA Islamic law professor Khāled Abū El Fadl questioned the authority of Bakhtiar’s translation by remarking that Bakhtiar “ha[d] a reputation as an editor, not [as] an Islamic scholar,” and that three years of classical Arabic are not enough. He also stated that he “[was] troubled by a method of translating that relies on dictionaries and other English translations” (qt. in Noreen S. Ahmed Ullah 2007). Similarly, despite being versed in Arabic lexicography and Applied Islamology, Youssef is still perceived as unqualified by the religious right to reinterpret the Qur’an because she is unveiled.

• 16. For more information, see the preface of my translation (Youssef 2017).

• 17. In both Second-Wave American Feminism (Friedan 1963; Millet 1970; Steinem 1969) and Postcolonial Feminist Studies (Anzaldua 2007; Chatterjee and Maira 2014; Davies 1994), there are no boundaries between the personal, the political, and the academic. In the specific field of Islamic Feminist Studies, the blurring of these three categories is best illustrated in the works of Mernissi (1991, 2001). In addition, the whole field of Islamic Studies is based on one man’s personal experience, namely, Prophet Muhammad’s first encounter with Gabriel in the Cave of Ḥirā where Gabriel gave him the Qur’anic Revelation. The use of personal examples is, therefore, present in the founding myth of Islamic history, not outside it. In this sense, my use of personal examples is grounded not only in Western and Eastern feminist thought, but more important, in the genesis of Islamic Studies.

• 18. The National Center for Translation, obviously, did not know that the book had already been translated into English by Routledge in 2007 and that it received a translation award from Ben ‘Alī, former President of Tunisia .

• 19. For the history of Tunisian state feminism , see Zayzafoon (2005, 95–134), chap. “Home, Body, and Nation: The Production of the Muslim Woman in the Reformist Thought of Tāhar Haddād and Habīb Bourguība.”

• 20. I use the words “East” and “West” here in the geographic sense. “East” is used primarily to refer to the Arabic-speaking Muslim world in North Africa and the Middle East, while “West” refers to Western Europe and North America. Since my focus is on translation from Arabic to English, “West” designates here in particular Great Britain and the USA.

• 21. Mentioned in the translator’s academic profile posted at the University of Sharjah website. See “Dr. Ronak Husni,” https://www2.aus.edu/ facultybios/profile.php?faculty=rhusni#B3. Accessed January 12, 2017.

• 22. See Bouhdība (1985) by Routledge; Fethi Benslāma (2002) by Minnesota University Press; Hichēm Djaït (2010) by Transaction Publishers, Djaït (2014) by The Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts; Meddeb (2003) by Basic Books; Meddeb (2010, 2013) by Fordham University Press. I am including here only the translated books authored by Meddeb which focus on Islam. Co-authored books and works published directly in English are not included in this list.

• 23. I am using the term “native informant” in the sense pinned down by Kiran Grewal, that is, as a non-Western woman who is allowed to speak only from within those colonial spaces which make her reproduce the colonial dichotomy between a progressive and modern Western civilization and an Eastern culture or Islamic tradition that oppresses women. See Grewal’s (2012) seminal article.

• 24. See Zayzafoon (2011, 196–97).

• 25. For this subject, see Amāl Grāmī (2007).

• 26. For the subject of translation and political intervention, see Baker (2015).

• 27. Between 2000 and 2016, neither Harvard nor The University of Texas Press translated any Arabic book in Islamic criticism.