From Transmitting Authority to Quiet Adaptation: Social Change and the Translation of Islamic Knowledge in Norway

Abstract

This article explores the transmission of textual Islamic knowledge in Norway—a context in which Muslims form a religious minority—using a pioneering method: studying the translation of texts. Many Muslims in Norway either came from another country themselves or have progenitors who did. Important texts relating to Islam have mostly been available in languages other than Norwegian. This makes it possible to use translation as a lens for understanding how Islamic knowledge is transmitted. I identify two tendencies in the transmission of Islamic knowledge through translation. Translation often cements the status of established and canonized texts and authors. But translation activities also show an adaptation to norms in Norwegian society. Texts pertaining to politically charged issues have sometimes been avoided altogether, and the wording of charged sections has in some instances been subtly changed. I label this process quiet adaptation. Many of the translated texts espouse a normativity that is more palatable to Norwegian society at large, and which Muslims living in Norway can more easily identify with. I conclude by discussing how the study of translation can be used as a way to explore social change in Muslim and other diaspora groups in Europe.

1. INTRODUCTION

We started out translating some important and central texts. But I wouldn’t want my children growing up thinking like that, you know? I wouldn’t want them to use that kind of language. It’s not fitting here, as simple as that. So that’s why we basically stopped the translation project.

(‘Hassan,’ interviewed by the author on 30 May 2022)

I met Hassan—a fictitious name—in a coffee shop in Oslo. We had scheduled an interview about translation activities he had been involved in. An organization he had been affiliated to had translated some short texts into Norwegian and had at some point announced plans to expand their engagement in the translation of Islamic books and leaflets. But for several reasons, the translation activities dwindled to nothing. To my surprise, Hassan was very open about the reasons why this happened. The organization started out with the conviction that it was important for Muslims in Norway to have more Islamic knowledge available in Norwegian. The authors and texts they chose for translation were well-regarded and often seen as canonical. But Hassan soon became uncomfortable with the whole project. With each text they translated, he said, he had to spend a lot of time fine-tuning the language in the Norwegian version. The texts frequently used words about non-Muslims or women that he found unacceptable, so he made slight adaptations to the language to make the result less offensive. In the end, they gave up the project. Hassan felt that there was a limit to how much he could change or adapt the texts and still maintain that what they were doing was in fact translation, and not the creation of new texts.

The story of Hassan is a vivid illustration of how textual Islamic knowledge—and the Islamic normativity that can be found in these texts—is transmitted in Norway, a country where Muslims form a minority. In this article, I explore this issue using a novel approach not previously put to systematic use in research on Muslims in Europe, namely examining translations of Islamic books and texts into Norwegian. Muslim communities in Norway and other countries in Western Europe often have many members who themselves, or progenitors, were born outside Norway and who have transnational ties to communities, organizations, and movements in Muslim-majority countries. Many of the important Islamic texts have therefore mostly been available in non-European languages, such as Urdu, Arabic, Turkish, etc. When a text is chosen for translation, it is often because it is seen as particularly important, and can thus reveal something about authority and canonicity. This process necessarily involves selection and adaptation: Some texts are chosen; others are left out. The texts themselves go through changes when they undergo translation. Through this lens, it becomes possible to see broader trends in the transmission of Islamic knowledge, including how Islamic theology and norms are adapted when they are translated into the Norwegian context.

The main claim in this article is that these processes reveal two important tendencies, both of which can be seen in the quote from Hassan that opened the article. On the one hand, established authority and established canonicity do matter. Muslims in Norway do not create a ‘European Islam’ or ‘Norwegian Islam’ from scratch, in a fully individualized way, but build on established lines of authority and transmission from organizations and movements in Muslim-majority countries.

At the same time, adaptation does occur. Some interpretations, texts, and norms get transmitted more or less as they are. Some are transmitted in a modified way. Other texts and interpretations, however, are left out completely. The publishers and translators of Islamic texts in Norway have increasingly emphasized what one may label as non-political aspects of Islamic practice and Islamic legal norms. Texts pertaining to politically charged issues have sometimes been avoided altogether, and the wording of charged sections has in some instances been subtly changed when translated into Norwegian. I call this quiet adaptation. The translation process has not fundamentally transformed Islamic legal norms into something different. But the translation process has arguably transformed the Islamic normativity to make it more palatable to Norwegian society at large, and which Muslims living in Norway more easily can identify with.

I begin with a survey of the existing research on the translation of Islamic texts in Europe. I then outline the research questions and methods in the study and define how I use key concepts such as textual Islamic knowledge, authority, and canonicity. The findings are presented in three sections. The first provides a descriptive overview of the Islamic field in Norway, and the history and present state of translation activities within Islamic movements and groups. The subsequent two sections are more analytical in nature, exploring both the transmission of authority and canonized works, and the adaptation to the social norms prevalent in Norway. I conclude by discussing limitations and what inferences we can draw from the data in the article.

2. STUDYING THE TRANSLATION OF ISLAMIC KNOWLEDGE IN EUROPE

Today there is a large body of research that explores how Muslims in Europe maintain theological and textual traditions and adapt them to the European context.¹ This research has, for example, focused on particular Muslim organizations, institutes for imam training, or the general approach of ordinary Muslims to authority and textual traditions. Some studies have explicitly looked at specific books or authority figures, and how they have been received and transmitted in Europe.²

To my knowledge, however, there are no studies that examine how Muslim communities in Europe engage in the translation of large bodies of Islamic text, and what such translation processes can tell us about theological change in Muslim communities in Europe. There is, however, a sizable body of work on translations of the Qur’an, including translations into European languages in both modern and pre-modern times.³ There are also some studies that look at translation or vernacularization of texts in Muslim-majority contexts, and in other countries where Muslims are or have been minorities—such as contemporary Russia,⁴ early modern Southeast Asia,⁵ early modern Russia,⁶ or medieval India.⁷ But in the European context, there have been to my knowledge no studies focusing on the translation of texts regarded by Muslims as Islamic, beyond work on translations of the Quran.

This omission is puzzling. The idea that translation in a minority or diaspora context can tell us something about what happens in that minority or diaspora community is highly intuitive. When a text is chosen for translation, the choice may imply that the text is seen as particularly important by a number of people. The selection of texts for translation can therefore reveal important tendencies about the communities in question: Which figures are seen as authorities? Which texts are seen as canonical? How is the theological tradition of a group in question adapted to their new society? If we are to use quantitative language, we may see choices about translation as a proxy for other changes in diaspora communities, such as changes in social norms or the degree to which a community maintains ties to their country of origin. At the same time, this association cannot be taken for granted without proper examination: Translators and publishers may have other reasons for choosing certain texts for translation.

The minutiae of the translation process itself can also be revealing. Translation always involves adaptation and choices about how to render certain terms, concepts, and words. In the field of translation studies, Venuti’s distinction between domestication and foreignization in translation has become influential.⁸ Domestication means that a text is translated in a way that makes it seem part of the cultural and linguistic context of the target language or target culture. Foreignization means that a text is translated in a way that maintains its status as distinct and different—as coming from abroad, from a different context or lifeworld. Applied to the world of Islamic theology, a domestication strategy may imply that texts are translated in a way that makes them feel smooth and natural to the reader, and not as something foreign.

Nevertheless, this is an area of study that has not been explored in research on Muslim communities in Europe, and only to a limited degree in other diaspora contexts. The scholar Omri Asscher recently published an article that proposes using translation as ‘a probe into diaspora-homeland relations.’⁹ He surveyed the journals Diaspora Studies, Diaspora, and Ethnic and Migration Studies in the past two decades and found ‘no articles that use textual translation as a tool to investigate homeland-diaspora relations. The same holds true for major translation studies journals such as Target, Translation and Interpreting Studies, and Translation Studies.’¹⁰

There nevertheless exists a small number of studies that have employed translation as a lens or yardstick for investigating homeland–diaspora relations, to borrow Asscher’s wording, or developments in minority groups more broadly. Asscher himself wrote a book about translation processes between Jewish communities in Israel and the USA.¹¹ Other scholars have focused on translations in immigrant newspapers and periodicals in the USA,¹² as well as translations to Italian of Canadian–Italian writings.¹³ Within translation studies and the sociology of translation, there are also a few studies in other domains that use translation as a yardstick for measuring influence or reach. The number of languages a certain work has been translated into, for example, has been used to gauge the influence of philosophers or scientific works.¹⁴ But with respect to Muslims in Europe, translation is a topic that has so far remained mostly unexplored—with research on translations of the Quran as the notable exception.

3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS, METHODS, AND KEY CONCEPT

I embarked on this study with a simple research question: How is textual Islamic knowledge transmitted through translation in Muslim communities in Norway? The term ‘textual Islamic knowledge’ has been chosen carefully, even though it may be problematic. When I use the term ‘Islamic,’ I have in mind what Muslims themselves regard as having to do with Islam—as opposed to texts written by Muslims that they do not regard as having to do with Islam as such.¹⁵ Other articles in this special issue use the term Islamic legal knowledge. This term, however, is not fully suitable in a country such as Norway. Norway does not have any Islamic institutions that can weigh in with authority on legal matters, unlike most Muslim-majority countries, or even a European country like the UK that has several Sharia councils.¹⁶ Neither does Norway have educational institutions for imams or Islamic theology. The institutions and organizations that do exist have tended to focus on only the most basic and pressing matters for the Muslim community: prayer times, the holiday calendar, and regulations of halal slaughter.¹⁷ Furthermore, the term ‘legal knowledge’ arguably does not capture the lived experience of Muslims in Norway, who do not seem to live their lives according to institutions where traditional fiqh is held in regard. The broader term ‘textual Islamic knowledge’ may therefore be more fitting. This term includes fiqh and what is referred to as legal knowledge, but denotes how such texts function in the Norwegian context: as a source of normativity and ideas about right and wrong, not as ‘laws.’ Textual is included to make clear that I study the knowledge contained in texts—and not Islamic knowledge which is not textual, but rather transmitted orally or through norms and practice.

Textual Islamic knowledge, and Islamic normativity more broadly, have been extensively studied among scholars of Islam in Europe. The novel approach in this article is to look specifically at translation as a measure for understanding the transmission of Islamic knowledge. Empirically, this project employs various types of data. One important source of data is a complete overview of all the Islamic works that have been translated into Norwegian, which I have compiled into a database. Given that the Muslim population in Norway is still relatively small, it is possible to paint a nearly complete picture of the Islamic texts that have been translated into Norwegian. Another source of data is a series of interviews I conducted with 10 actors who have been involved in such translation processes, whether as translators, publicists, or funders. From most organizations or publishers, I only interviewed one person; from a couple of organizations, I interviewed two. I agreed not to refer to them by name in the article, so that they would speak more freely during the interview. I refer to them in two different ways, in order to maintain anonymity. When the topic relates directly to their own organization and is not of a sensitive nature, I refer to it as an ‘interview with a representative from organization X,’ with no precise date added. When the quotation is about a matter which may be sensitive, I refer to the person by a fictitious name and provide the date of the interview. The interviews were conducted between February 2022 and November 2023. The interviews were recorded and I also took extensive notes during the interviews. Later on, I transcribed in detail some parts of the interviews from the recordings. I also explored what works are available in Islamic bookstores and mosque libraries, or are promoted on Islamic websites.

By comparing these data sources, I identified some broader trends in the Islamic landscape in Norway: How the normativity in Islamic texts gets adapted and transformed when texts are translated into the Norwegian language and context. The analytical process was iterative, and I alternated between the interviews and the textual data. I compared statements from the interviewees with patterns in the textual data. This led me to discard some hypotheses or hunches I had early on, whereas other interpretations were strengthened. I interpret my empirical findings by relying on some key concepts: authority, canonicity, and adaptation. Canon and canonization are concepts that have been particularly influential within research on Christianity and Judaism and have also had an impact on philological disciplines. Following a slow start in the 1990s, these concepts have also been applied to the Islamic traditions in a fruitful way.¹⁸ In this study, I follow Jonathan Brown in his practical understanding of canons and canonicity: A work can be said to be canonical if it is read with a significant amount of charity by a certain group of people.¹⁹ This means that the work is not approached in a critical way, but read and interpreted in the best light, often with reverence and respect. If a work appears in a list of canonical works, but is actually approached in a critical and questioning manner, it is no longer canonical to the same degree. When I use notions of canonical or canonicity in this article, I have in mind that the group in question holds this particular work in high regard, and reads it with a significant amount of charity.

The concept of authority is closely connected with this sense of canonicity, as canonical works are often treated in a way that gives them symbolic authority. When I use the term authority in this article, however, I follow Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke and refer to particular authors or institutions within the Islamic field who are able to exercise influence on Muslims. Krämer and Schmidtke understand authority in a Weberian sense—as being able ‘to have one’s rules and rulings followed, or obeyed, without recourse to coercive power.’²⁰ Finally, the concept of adaptation is used here in a sociological sense. In the sociology of migration and minorities, various concepts have been used for referring to how ethnic minorities or migrants adjust to life in a society where they form a minority. Scholars have applied such concepts as acculturation, integration, or assimilation.²¹ I find the concept of adaptation to be better suited, as it is fairly neutral. When I use the term ‘adaptation’ in this article, I nevertheless mean that the actor or institution in question in one way or another moves closer to the dominant norms and ways of thinking in the society in which they take part.

4. A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: TRANSLATION IN THE NORWEGIAN ISLAMIC CONTEXT

Organized Islam in Norway began to emerge in the 1970s, following labour immigration from Pakistan and eventually other countries.²² Like many other European countries, the mosque landscape soon became divided according to country of origin, language, and theological orientation. The most salient division on the Norwegian scene in the 1980s and 1990s was between different strands of South Asian Sunni Islam—between the Deobandis and Barelwis, and internally among Barelwis. The schism between the Deobandis and Barelwis on the Indian subcontinent goes back more than a century, with the Barelwis espousing a more Sufi-oriented spirituality than the Deobandis.²³ Some of the splits on the Islamic scene in Norway were therefore theological in nature. Other divisions, however, were mostly about personal conflicts and disagreements.

Other nationalities were also present. At the start of the 1980s, there was a single Turkish mosque in Oslo, but this mosque also experienced internal conflicts and soon split into several mosques. Arab migrants also established mosques, as later with Somali and Bosnian Muslims. Norwegian converts started to play a role in the Islamic field in the late 1980s and were particularly connected to some of the Arab-speaking mosques. Shia Muslims became present as a minority, with three larger mosques in the Oslo area—dominated by Shias from Pakistan and Lebanon. The Ahmadiyya community also established a mosque in Oslo in the 1980s.

The organized Islamic field in Norway differs from the Islamic fields in several other European countries, where mosques or Islamic associations are often organized through larger federations. In Norway, in contrast, the main organizational unit is the individual mosque. Mosques in Norway receive funding from the state according to their formal membership size. This is required by law and has to do with Norway’s history of having independent churches alongside the Church of Norway, which was the state church until 2012.²⁴ This means that translation began under the auspice of individual mosques, or in organizations that were, in all but name, connected to certain mosques.

When I searched through mosque libraries and Islamic websites, it emerged that there were particularly four mosques or mosque-connected organizations that engaged in translation early on, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. Two of the pioneering mosques where translation is concerned were founded by activists connected to Islamist movements, even though the mosques soon became independent and chose their own paths. The Islamic Cultural Centre, founded by activists from the Jamaat-e-Islami movement in Pakistan, published pamphlets and a few books.²⁵ Several Norwegian converts with links to the Rabita Mosque—a mosque that had been founded by activists who sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood—engaged in thorough translation projects through Den islamske informasjonsforeningen (DIIF), ‘The Islamic Information Society.’²⁶ The third mosque to start with translation a bit later was Minhaj ul-Quran, a Pakistani Sufi mosque that is part of the global Minhaj organization, led by the Pakistani Sufi cleric Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri (b. 1951).²⁷ The Ahmadiyya community in Norway also began to translate and publish several books in the 1990s.²⁸ All these mosques or mosque-connected organizations translated a variety of texts. Some were printed as proper books, and some were only available as leaflets distributed in the mosques.

In the 2000s, new mosques and organizations began to engage in translation. Mosques connected to the Sufi-oriented Barelwi movement had long been numerically dominant in Norway. They constituted by far the largest group among Norwegian Muslims. The Barelwi movement had for the most part not made its presence felt in the Islamic field at large, however, partly due to internal divisions and conflicts.²⁹ Barelwi actors were mostly invisible within The Islamic Council of Norway, the main umbrella organization, which was dominated by actors from the Islamic Cultural Centre, Rabita, and the Bosnian mosque. In the 2000s, however, Barelwi actors seemed to become more organized. Among other initiatives, two publishing houses were founded in the 2010s by actors in the Barelwi sphere: Misbah Publishing and Islamsk litteraturforening (‘Islamic Literature Society’). The first is connected to Søndre Nordstrand Muslimske Senter, a Barelwi mosque. It has a clear doctrinal orientation towards Barelwi Islam and focuses on instruction for children and youth.³⁰ The second is independent, even though it was started by actors with a Barelwi background, and attempted to cater to a variety of mosques and Muslims.³¹

In the 2010s, there were also many translations done under the auspice of the small organization Quranic Education Society, which is part of the rationalist anti-ḥadīth movement Tolu-e-Islam in Pakistan.³² The 2000s and 2010s also saw the emergence of translation projects that were not closely connected to mosques. A group of young Shīʿa Muslims began to translate works in the Shīʿa tradition in the 2010s, possibly in response to an increase in Sunni- Shīʿa polemics.³³ A couple of Norwegian converts to Islam also undertook translation projects all by themselves, without any apparent support from organizations or mosques.³⁴

A Salafi and post-Salafi trend emerged in Norway from the 2000s onwards, with several Salafi or post-Salafi organizations being founded. The largest and most influential of these was Islam Net.³⁵ Islam Net was called ‘Salafi’ by some outside observers early on, but never accepted the Salafi label themselves. It is probably fair to say that it was at least Salafi-inspired in the earliest phase. Increasingly, however, the organization moved away from some of the core doctrinal tenets of Salafism. At the moment, the organization may possibly be labelled as what some scholars have referred to as post-Salafi—somewhat influenced by Salafism but no longer Salafi—even though representatives from the organization have told me that they do not feel comfortable with this label either.³⁶ Islam Net translated both fatwas and booklets early on. Later, key actors in the organization began translating short books independently.³⁷ A mosque in the northern city of Tromsø, the Al-Nor Senter, also had Salafi leanings and translated some short works from English to Norwegian in the 2000s.³⁸ In the 2020s, Ayah akademiet, a conservative Sunni organization catering to women only, started to translate books and leaflets as well.³⁹

The latest organization to begin translating was the Süleymancılar movement, the Norwegian branch of a Turkish Sufi organization. They translated a shortened fiqh manual (mukhtaṣar) into Norwegian in 2022, for use in teaching Islamic instruction to children and youth.⁴⁰ This manual appears to have been written in Turkish by a collective in the Süleymancılar movement in modern times, and has previously been translated into several other languages.⁴¹

This overview thus shows that there are several different groups who engage in translation. There is currently not an established and unified market for Islamic books or texts in Norway, possibly due to the relatively small size of the Muslim population in Norway. There is just one bookstore that sells Islamic books from a variety of publishers.⁴² According to several of my interviewees, translating, publishing, and selling Islamic books is not a profitable endeavour. It is often done pro bono or for very little remuneration, usually by individuals who regard it as an ethical or religious duty towards the Muslim community.

Summarizing this section, the translation of Islamic texts into Norwegian follows the following storyline: it began with actors who had roots in Islamist movements and with the Ahmadiyya community in the late 1980s and early 1990s, followed by Pakistani Barelwi actors in the 2000s and 2010s, and subsequently joined by Salafi and post-Salafi actors. Somali, Bosnian, and Turkish mosques are conspicuously absent from the translation sphere. Even though these communities have been present in Norway for decades, they do not seem to engage much in translation activities. The Turkish and Bosnian mosques have seemed to favour instruction in Turkish or Bosnian, according to two interviewees, even though the Süleymancılar movement as mentioned translated a key instructional manual into Norwegian in 2022.

5. MAINTAINING THE CANON: TRANSMITTING OLD AND NEW CANONICAL WORKS

Although the movements and organizations described above are different from each other in many ways, some themes are common in their translation activities. In several of the organizations that engage in translation, a clear pattern is that canonized works are often translated first. Many of these are works that were already recognized as canonical in the broader movement to which the mosque or organization belongs, meaning that they were read with the utmost charity and reverence. They may not be universally regarded as canonical in other Muslim movements, though.

Several of these works were of the generalist type, written for the general public rather than for other scholars. The works often detail what Islam says on general issues, rather than being detailed fiqh manuals or original scholarly works. These works were usually written by authors regarded as authorities in the different communities.

The Islamic Cultural Centre, for example, translated several works early on by Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī (1903–1979), the founder and long-time leader of the Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan. The Islamic Cultural Centre is independent and does not belong to a transnational organization that expects them to disseminate certain works. Nevertheless, it was clear from several interviews that they regarded Mawdūdī as a very important ideological inspiration. The work by Mawdūdī they saw as most central was Fundamentals of Islam, which was translated into Norwegian as early as 1983 in cooperation with the ICC and published by an academic publishing house.⁴³ In 2023, they decided to republish this work, with just a minor updating of the language in the translation.⁴⁴ The ICC had also published several smaller leaflets or pamphlets written by Mawdūdī throughout the years, touching upon various topics related either to apologetics or ethical questions relevant to Muslims in the West.

In the 2000s and 2010s, the mosque also engaged in an ambitious project to translate Mawdūdī’s rendering of the Quran—or more precisely, Mawdūdī’s translation of the Quranic text into Urdu, with his commentaries and notes.⁴⁵ In an interview with a representative from the organization, I asked why they had chosen to translate Mawdūdī’s translation, rather than translating the original Quranic text. The conversation went as follows:

OE: This question may be a bit dumb, but why did you decide to translate an existing translation? Why not just translate the original text from Arabic? Wouldn’t that be easier, in a way? Do you understand what I mean?

Interviewee: Well, part of the reason is that it is very difficult to translate from Arabic at that level. Nobody in the mosque can do that, not even the imam. But Mawdūdī also makes the Quran accessible. He explains things in a very easy manner. The Quran can be difficult to understand. And Mawdūdī explains it in a great way. The message, kind of. So it’s very useful for Muslims in Norway to read his translation.

(Interview with a representative from Islamic Cultural Centre, 2022)

A similar tendency could be found in one of the other mosques, Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran. This mosque is part of the global Minhaj-ul-Quran organization, founded by the Pakistani cleric Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri.⁴⁶ In contrast with the Islamic Cultural Centre, the Minhaj-ul-Quran mosque is part of a transnational organizational structure, where ul-Qadri is the undisputed leader. Almost all the books translated by the mosque so far have been books by ul-Qadri.

Just like the Islamic Cultural Centre, the Minhaj-ul-Quran also published a Norwegian translation of the Quran with commentaries, which was a translation of a translation. It was based on ul-Qadri’s translation of the Quran to Urdu. Ul-Qadri’s translation includes short parenthetical notes in the text that explain what he regards as the meaning or message. I asked a representative from the mosque why they chose to translate a translation, instead of translating the original Arabic text to Norwegian. Their response was strikingly similar to that of the Islamic Cultural Centre.

OE: If I may pose a question, could I ask why you made a translation from an Urdu translation when you wanted to translate the Quran? Why not translate directly from Arabic?

Interviewee: It was about making the Quran accessible to Norwegian Muslims. The verses in the Quran can be translated in a lot of different ways. In the translation by Taher ul-Qadri, he explains the meaning and makes it accessible to modern Muslims. His translation also takes seriously the modern world and what we know from science. When translating the word “yom” which relates to how God created the world, it is usually translated as “day”. But ul-Qadri takes science seriously, so he translated it as "periods of creation." This is also a correct translation, but more in line with what we know from science.

OE: I understand. That makes sense. But can I ask if there was a discussion around this, was there anybody who wanted the translation to be based directly on the original text?

Interviewee: There was some discussion. But in the end, we agreed that ul-Qadri’s version is so useful for Muslims in Norway that we went with that.

(Interview with a representative from Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran, 2022)

For both the Minhaj ul-Quran and the Islamic Cultural Centre, then, a key justification for prioritizing the translation of works from their own internal canon is that they regard these works as more useful than other works. But in my conversations with representatives from these mosques, there are also indications that there may have been other reasons as well. The Islamic Cultural Centre, for example, has prioritized translating and publishing children’s books, as that is where they see the highest interest. According to the representative from the mosque, this was what people actually used, not ‘complicated books.’ In our interview, he framed it in the following way:

Interviewee: We haven’t closed the door on books for adults, but we’ll have to see. There is very little interest in literature for grown-ups among Muslims. Adults don’t buy books. They are on social media or watch clips on YouTube. It’s unfortunate, but that’s how it is. But they do want books for their kids.

OE: I see, interesting. If I can go back to the book about Fundamentals of Islam from Mawdūdī, though, that’s clearly a book intended for adults?

Interviewee: But the Mawdūdī book is different. That’s indeed about fundamentals. It’s really the basics. It’s just so important. So we thought we needed to publish it because it really explains the most important things. For more specialized stuff, or subjects that are more controversial, people can go and find for themselves. But this book, we thought we just had to publish it because it is about the most essential things.

(Interview with representative from Islamic Cultural Centre by the author, 2022)

From this statement, it seems clear that ease of use or popular need was not the only criteria used when deciding which books to translate. Choosing to translate and publish key works by Mawdūdī also happened because actors in the mosque simply regarded his work as being self-evidently important for them—a clear mark of canonicity under Jonathan Brown’s definition. The publication of Mawdūdī’s work did not happen as a result of outside pressure. It rather happened because Mawdūdī appeared as a self-evident authority, decades after his death. In line with Krämer and Schmidtke’s definition of authority, Maududi was able to influence the ICC ‘without recourse to coercive power.’

In other Islamic translation projects in Norway, one can also see the importance of established canonicity. Muhammad al-Burundy, an imam in the organization Islam Net, has for example published translations on his blog of works by scholars such as Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (1914–1999) and Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ al-ʿUthaymīn (1929–2001), two of the foremost Salafi scholars in the 20th century.⁴⁷

In still other translation projects, however, such as the one being undertaken by the organization Islamsk litteraturforening, canonicity plays less of a role, outwardly at least. The texts they have translated are authoritative and well-regarded, they assured me when I interviewed representatives from the organization. But when presenting their books, they do not prominently advertise the names of the original authors they translate. One book about the four imams—or the founders of four Sunni law schools—was, for example, a translation of an Arabic book by an author named Ibrāhīm Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Jamal, who does not appear to be widely known in the West. The name of the original author does not appear on the title page and can only be found in a footnote in the introduction.⁴⁸ They rather highlight the topics they write about, trying to make it interesting to as wide an audience as possible.

But even in organizations where canonicity clearly plays a large role, it is not the only factor at play. In all of the interviews I conducted, there was a clear pattern: when choosing texts to translate, and in the actual translation project, they were careful to translate texts in a way that aligned with the ethical orientation of Muslims in Norway and which would not entail risks of backlash from society at large.

6. QUIET ADAPTATION: TOWARDS A NORWEGIANIZED ISLAMIC NORMATIVITY

Within the scope of this study, I have not done close readings of particular translations focusing on how they may have been adapted to the Norwegian context. Such a study was recently published, however, by the Norwegian theologian and scholar of Islam Oddbjørn Leirvik.⁴⁹ He compared three Norwegian translations of the Quran. These were all translations of canonized translations from specific Islamic movements. Two of these have been discussed previously in this article—the translations from the Islamic Cultural Centre and Minhaj-ul-Quran. Leirvik also looked at the Norwegian translation from the Ahmadiyya community. Leirvik traces how these three Norwegian translations deal with the controversial Quranic verse 4:34, which is commonly taken to mean that a husband has the right to physically discipline or beat a disobedient wife.⁵⁰ Leirvik shows that all three mosques—the Islamic Cultural Centre, Minhaj ul-Quran, and the Ahmadiyya mosque—commented on or adapted this verse, each in a different way, to distance themselves from physical violence. Translating ḍaraba as daske, which means something like a light slap, the Islamic Cultural Centre writes in a footnote that this verse should nevertheless ‘not be seen as possibility/permission for physical punishment.’⁵¹ The mosque even changed the wording from one edition to the next—the first in 2009 and the second in 2015. Minhaj ul-Quran translated ḍaraba completely differently, to ‘formane dem gjennom eksempler (helt til de forbedrer seg),’ meaning admonish them through examples (until they improve).⁵² The Ahmadiyya movement also did not use any words associated with physical violence, and just the more neutral term straffe, ‘to punish.’⁵³ All three translations thus show a clear tendency towards an Islamic normativity that is in line with dominant norms in Norway, where violence towards spouses is very much frowned upon. The interesting aspect is that none of the interviewees in these mosques mentioned this themselves. I only became aware of Leirvik’s article after the completion of the interviews and did therefore not bring up the topic of this or other verses in the Qur’an. In an interview with a representative from the Islamic Cultural Centre, for example, the interviewee denied that they ever changed or adapted the wording of translations that could be controversial.

A couple of other interviewees also denied forcefully that they had ever done any adaptations to the texts, due to a fear of negative reactions. In an interview with ‘Ahmed,’ for example, he framed the issue in this way:

OE: Has it ever happened that there are controversial sections of the texts you translate that you don’t feel comfortable with? In that case, what do you do?

Interviewee: I cannot recall that this has happened, actually. If it happened we would have to deal with that. We would probably adapt it a bit. But I don’t think it’s a big issue.

OE: But there must surely have been instances when you thought that a text you translated could be read negatively by journalists or politicians or others. After all, there are many heated media debates about Islam and Muslims.

Interviewee: You know, all of this is exaggerated. It is just Islamophobia. It is nothing to get excited about, they just try to find topics they can make a fuss about. All the texts we translate are good and just, there is nothing there which is objectionable, if one really reads it.

(Interview with ‘Ahmed,’ 19 November 2022)

At the same time, the actual practice of translation does show a substantial amount of adaptation to the Norwegian context, including in the organization Ahmed himself belongs to. Some interviewees were very open about it, whereas others merely hinted at it. This adaptation, though, is usually not acknowledged openly. I therefore label this process quiet adaptation—adaptation to a revised Islamic normativity without talking about it out loud.

This adaptation can be seen in various ways. The most obvious type of adaptation is a normative domestication of the text—as Oddbjørn Leirvik demonstrated for a certain verse in the Quran. Another example is a translation of the classic short ḥadīth collection 40 Ḥadīths by Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī (1233–1277), published online by the Rabita Mosque on the website islam.no.⁵⁴ The translation was without notes or commentary, except for ḥadīth number 14. In an English translation done under the auspices of the Muslim American Society, it is worded in the following way:

On the authority of Abdullah Ibn Masud (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said:

‘It is not permissible to spill the blood of a Muslim except in three [instances]: the married person who commits adultery, a life for a life, and the one who forsakes his religion and separates from the community.’ (Al-Bukhari and Muslim)⁵⁵

On the islam.no website the following text was added: ‘N.B. This ḥadīth must be studied more closely. We have included some of this discussion in our article “Freedom of religion is a core value in Islam”’ (bold type in the original). In the article on freedom of religion that they refer to, they do not disavow this ḥadīth. But they claim that the ḥadīth must be taken in context—it refers to treason against the state (ie ‘community’), not apostasy as such.⁵⁶

Another indicator of the adaptation that has taken place concerns the kind of titles that are translated and the topics they concern themselves with. Most of the translation projects cover aspects of Islamic normativity that are not political or controversial. The translated works typically do not deal with issues such as governance, law, or warfare. They rather deal with aspects relating to prayer, fasting, and so forth. We may, for example, look at the translations of The Islamic Information Society, which was one of the first organizations to engage in translation. Their catalogue currently consists of 16 titles.⁵⁷ Of these, only one book could be said to deal with political issues; a book about the second caliph ʿUmar, and the justice in his way of governing.⁵⁸ Even that book was not prescriptive or dogmatic but rather presented friendly stories about ʿUmar. The other books are about topics such as prayer, the life of the prophet, halal food, Muslim marriage, and books for children.

The same pattern can be seen in the publication profile of The Islamic Literature Society, which is currently among the most active translators and publishers of Islamic books. Up to now they have published 39 books, most of which are translations.⁵⁹ They have assigned labels to the books they publish—Islamic law, poetry, history, the prophet Muḥammad, ḥadīth, etc. Under the label Islamic law, there are only two books. One is a ‘manual in purity’ by the aforementioned Taher ul-Qadri, and the other is a treatise by the Saudi Sufi scholar Muḥammad ibn ʻAlawī al-Mālikī (1944–2004) which defends visiting the grave of the prophet. The latter topic—visiting the prophet’s grave—is a controversial topic among Muslims, where it is heavily debated between Sufis and Salafis, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. This topic is not regarded as controversial by many non-Muslims in society at large, however.

A similar tendency can be seen in the titles that have been translated by the women-only Sunni organization Ayah Akademiet, which alongside The Islamic Literature Society has been among the most active in the Islamic translation field in the 2020s. The organization has so far published 11 titles, which can be downloaded from their website.⁶⁰ Of these 11 titles, 6 are translations of English books and 5 are original leaflets written by members in the organization. All of these works—both the translations and the texts they wrote themselves—focus on more or less private aspects of faith and practice. There are works on wearing the hijab, on preparation for Ramadan, on fighting the Shaytan (the devil), on strength and courage during difficult times, and other such topics. None of the works cover political issues or issues that may be controversial in Norwegian society at large.

Several of the interviewees were open about the fact that there were patterns in the types of literature they translated. One actor who had been involved in translation projects for many years framed it in this way:

I don’t think it was a very conscious choice to translate some works and not others. I think it’s more something that just happened. Of course, we thought that some things were worth looking into, and some things were not interesting, but it wasn’t like "Hey we’re not going to translate this stuff at all". But when I look back at it, I see that there is a pattern. More and more it became oriented towards a certain form of spirituality, kind of. You know, there is stuff on Ramadan fasting, prayer, mysticism, all of that. But there is not much on, I don’t know, controversial stuff. Women’s roles. Laws, democracy, jihad, things like that. We looked into some of it in the beginning. But then it faded away. Did it play a role that these things could create controversy? I didn’t think so then, but it probably did.

(‘Khadija,’ interviewed by the author on 25 February 2022)

Another interviewee was clear that they actually made conscious choices when it came to what kind of literature they translated. For him, it was an important goal to avoid controversy and not publish anything that could create a stir.

Our goal is to teach people about Islam. That’s it. We want to make information and literature available. If there is controversy, it detracts from that. So we avoid it as much as possible. If we are going to publish a work, we first have a discussion among ourselves, where we ask if this is something we can stand behind. If it is, we go forward with the project. Then we have another round at the end where we look at the language and the complete work together.

(‘Khalid,’ interviewed by the author on 5 May 2022)

The interviewee at the opening of this article, ‘Hassan,’ told a similar story—except that for him it was about personal ethical convictions, not necessarily the fear of controversy. Others said that they had to adapt or discard texts that were overly polemical, either directed towards other Muslim groups or towards non-Muslims. All these actors tell a similar story: that the translation process was not a simple act of transmitting something from abroad, but about domesticating the knowledge and quietly adapting the normativity in the texts to the Norwegian context.

7. SUMMING IT UP: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

This article has examined translation as a novel approach for studying Muslim communities in Europe. My claim in the introduction was that translation can be a useful lens or measure for understanding broader processes in diaspora communities, such as the transmission of knowledge and normativity. Translation is a costly and time-consuming endeavour. When a community chooses certain texts or books for translation, their choices tell us something about what they regard as important.

One way to validate a novel measure or method is to see whether there is correspondence with established findings in the field. If such a study of translation had shown that mosques only translated works about peripheral issues, for example, and not about Islamic theology or ethics, it would be reasonable to assume that translation did not tell us that much after all. But in this case, there is good correspondence between the basic findings in the article and established findings in the research on Muslim communities in Europe. This indicates that translation can be a useful lens for studying canonicity, normativity, and social change among Muslim groups and possibly other diaspora communities.

The core findings in the article are not surprising, seen in the light of existing research on Muslim communities in Europe. It shows that, with regard to the transmission of Islamic knowledge in Norway, there are both continuity and change. As the historian Peter Burke once wrote about the concepts of continuity and change, ‘in a sense this is what all historians study all the time.’⁶¹ There is continuity: established authorities and canonized works are clearly transmitted. This applies to the Qur’an and ḥadīth collections, of course, but also to authors and figures who are regarded as canonical within specific Islamic movements or organizations.

Then there is also change. The interesting question is the direction of change—how transmission of Islamic knowledge and normativity changes in the Norwegian context. In the larger sociology of migration and minorities in Europe, processes of both adaptation and reactivity have been described—where reactivity means to go in the opposite direction of society at large.⁶² What the translated works indicate about Muslim communities in Norway is a clear tendency towards adaptation—translated works are adapted to the social reality in Norway. This does not mean that it is nothing but a one-sided adjustment to expectations from stakeholders in society at large. It also seems to be an adjustment towards the ethical views and practices among Muslims in Norway themselves.

We must nevertheless exercise some caution regarding the inferences we can draw from these patterns. It could be that the communities that engage in translation are more open to change and adaptation to begin with. At the same time, the communities and movements that have been surveyed in this article are very dissimilar from one another, and together are representative of large parts of the Islamic landscape in Norway: Salafis and post-Salafis, Barelwis and Sufis, Ahmadiyya, and mosques with roots in Islamist movements. The fact that similar patterns can be seen in the translation activities in all these disparate movements does indicate that there are some overarching tendencies at play.

Where adaptation and change can be seen through the translation lens, it is in any case not overt, nor change of a revolutionary type. In this article, I have labelled it quiet adaptation. This kind of change has some similarities with how some scholars have described theological change in pre-modern Islam. Sherman Jackson, for example, famously described taqlīd and theological change in post-formative Islam as legal scaffolding. This concept sees change as happening through additions and injunctions, like building up a scaffold, rather than tearing down the existing framework.⁶³ The quiet adaptation I have described in this article is not of a type that tears authorities or canonized figures down. The canon—or rather canons—are very much present in the Islamic texts that get translated into Norwegian. Change rather happens through selection and changes in the wording. It is an adaptation that is done quietly, without fanfare, but which nevertheless ends up with an Islamic normativity that is different from what can be found in some of the canonical source texts.

8. TRANSLATION AS A MEASURE OF CHANGE IN FUTURE RESEARCH

Finally, the findings in the article show that the connection between translation, canonicity, and social change is not linear or one-to-one, which should be taken into account in future studies of translation and social change. Translation cannot be used as a simple proxy for measuring canonicity or social change, without proper examination of the case at hand. As the article has shown, translation does point towards canonicity and authority in some instances. In the data I have presented here, this is clearly the case with the way the Islamic Cultural Centre and Minhaj-ul-Quran mosques approached translations by Taher ul-Qadri and Mawdūdī.

At the same time, such canonical translations do not mean that the communities in question adopt the original texts uncritically. The Quran translations clearly show an adaptation to Norwegian norms. In a prior study I conducted on Muslim leadership in Norway, a leader from the Islamic Cultural Centre indicated that although he held Mawdūdī in very high regard, he was completely opposed to the political movement Mawdūdī had founded—the Jamaat e-Islami party in Pakistan.⁶⁴ But the study of translation does at the very minimum show that both Mawdūdī and ul-Qadri still function as central authority figures for these two movements in the diaspora.

In other cases, translation does not seem to say much at all about canonicity or authority as such and is mostly done for reasons of availability or usefulness. The children’s books which currently make up most of the translated Islamic material in Norwegian seem to be of a non-canonical nature: They are not approached with reverence, following Jonathan Brown’s definition of canonicity, and rather seem to be means towards an end.

In a similar way, the lack of translation in certain communities may or may not indicate something about larger processes of social change. I have not gone into detail on this issue in the article, but interviewees indicated to me that there were different reasons why the Somali, Bosnian and Turkish communities largely did not get involved in translation efforts. In the Somali community, one interviewee thought that the main reason was a lack of resources. In the Turkish community, one interviewee claimed that it was about a certain religious nationalism in Turkish communities, where Islam, the Turkish nation, and the Turkish language were seen as interconnected. In the Bosnian community, one interviewee thought that it was about a strong dedication to the Bosnian language following the Bosnian genocide. In an interview with me, a representative from the Bosnian mosque explained the lack of translated material in this way: ‘You know, the Bosnian people experienced genocide about 30 years ago. After that, it has become hugely important for us to preserve our language. It doesn’t mean that we do not want to integrate, of course we do. It is just that we feel a duty to preserve our language as far as possible.’ (interview with representative from the Bosnian mosque, 2023)

The lack of translation thus tells us something about the state of the Somali, Turkish, and Bosnian communities in Norway. But what it tells us differs from case to case. This holds a lesson for the future study of translation in Muslim and diaspora communities in Europe and beyond: The study of translation as a lens on social change should be carried out with attention to detail and context. In this way, it can show us patterns one might otherwise have missed.

Footnotes

Author notes