Tahrim Kitabat al-Quran al-Karim bi Huruf Ghayr Arabiyya Ajamiyya aw Latiniyya
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- Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Dawah and Guidance - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Tahrim Kitabat al-Quran al-Karim bi Huruf Ghayr Arabiyya Ajamiyya aw Latiniyya (The Prohibition of Writing the Noble Quran in Non-Arabic, Foreign, or Latin Letters) is a single-volume treatise by Salih Ali al-Awd examining the Islamic legal prohibition against transliterating or recording the text of the Quran in non-Arabic scripts .
Background and Composition
The work originated from an earlier booklet authored by Salih Ali al-Awd titled Kitabat al-Nass al-Qur'ani bi-l-Harf al-Latini: Khatar Dahim ala al-Mushaf al-Uthmani (Writing the Quranic Text in Latin Letters: An Imminent Danger to the Uthmanic Mushaf), issued as the eleventh publication in the Islamic Education Series (Silsilat al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah) by the Centre of Islamic Education in Paris . Following the printing of that booklet, al-Awd dispatched over 120 inquiries and copies of the text to prominent scholars, muftis, Islamic universities, fatwa councils, ministries of Awqaf, and da'wah centers across more than twenty countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe .
He asked the scholars for their legal verdicts regarding writing the Quranic text in Latin letters under the pretext of facilitating its recitation for non-Arabs and new converts, as well as their assessment of his research . Al-Awd compiled the resulting fatwas and institutional declarations into this expanded work, demonstrating an overarching consensus among Islamic authorities on the strict prohibition of rendering the Quran in any non-Arabic script .
Contents and Core Arguments
The book gathers legal verdicts, scholarly statements, and official resolutions from various Islamic bodies and scholars, including the Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League, the Fatwa Committee of Al-Azhar, Dar al-Ifta of Egypt under Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the Council of Reciters in Damascus, the General Fatwa Department of Jordan, the Faculty of Sharia at Qatar University, al-Tahir Ahmad al-Zawi (Mufti of Libya), and Muhammad al-Ghazali .
The author and the cited authorities base the prohibition on several primary legal and textual arguments:
- Divine Revelation in Arabic: The Quran was revealed verbatim in clear Arabic ( بِلِسَانٍ عَرَبِيٍّ مُبِينٍ ), both in its vocal articulation and written form, and anything transcribed in non-Arabic letters does not constitute the Quran .
- Consensus on the Uthmanic Script: The Companions under Caliph Uthman ibn Affan, followed by the Successors and subsequent generations, established a binding consensus (ijma') to preserve the Quran exclusively in the Uthmanic Arabic script (al-rasm al-uthmani) .
- Phonetic and Linguistic Inadequacy: Latin and foreign alphabets lack equivalents for numerous Arabic guttural and emphatic consonants (such as ha, kha, sad, dad, ta, za, ayn, and ghayn) and cannot accommodate rules of tajwid (such as elongation and nasalization), inevitably causing distortion (tahrif) in pronunciation and corruption of Quranic meanings .
- Blocking Pretexts to Distortion (Sadd al-Dhara'i): Allowing transliteration would splinter the Muslim community into divergent national texts (such as French, Turkish, or Indonesian Qurans) and alienate non-Arab Muslims from learning Arabic .
The book emphasizes that assisting non-Arabic speakers must be achieved by teaching them Arabic script or through translations of Quranic meanings and exegesis (tafsir), rather than transliterating the sacred text itself .
Publication and Reception
The work features a commendatory evaluation (taqriz) written by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Abyat, assistant professor at the Faculty of Sharia in Fez, Morocco, dated 7 Jumada al-Ula 1411 AH / 26 November 1990 CE . The book was published in a single volume in 1416 AH / 1995–1996 CE by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance of Saudi Arabia, introduced by Dr. Abd Allah ibn Ahmad al-Zayd, Deputy Minister for Publications and Publishing .
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