A translation of the Holy Quran into Hebrew, approved by the Saudi authorities, has been found to contain more than 300 errors, a number of which appearing to support Israel’s narrative over its claim to Palestine and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
MEMO said some of the errors in the apparently “Judaized” copy “appear to support Israel’s narrative over its claim to Palestine and al-Aqsa Mosque.”
The translation leaves out the name of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), including where the holy book describes the Prophet of Islam’s miraculous overnight journey from the holy city of Mecca to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Across the Saudi version, the name of the Mosque is also mistranslated into “The Temple,” the Jewish name for the site.
The copy also writes in parenthesis after references to “The Temple” that the site is the same place where “the Temple of Suleiman (a Prophet of the Israelites)” is located.
The Palestinian Shehab News Agency was one of the outlets alerting the public to the errors. It published a video, which warned about the “doctrinal implications” that are conveyed in the Saudi copy.
The errors could create “the impression that the Islamic holy text itself endorses a fundamentalist Jewish reading of history,” MEMO wrote.
The al-Aqsa Mosque’s compound is Islam’s third holiest site, but bears significance for Jews and Christians too.
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Israel has, however, been widely denounced for trying to gradually gnaw away at Muslims’ and Christians’ rights to the site since 1948, when it claimed existence after overrunning huge swathes of Arab territories.
It was the Saudis, in fact, that led the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 which offered full normalization with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem) and a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194.
Israel’s ability to forge new relations with the Saudis despite not conceding to any of the demands in the Arab initiative has been presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a victory for him and a demonstration of Israel’s strength in the region.
Israel has been accused of removing the connection of Islam and Christianity to Jerusalem in an attempt to cement its exclusive claim to the occupied territory.
In addition to passing laws reducing non-Jews to second class status by declaring Israel to be a Jewish state, lawmakers in Tel-Aviv have also banned the Muslim call to prayer, and regularly blocks and abuses worshipers in the holy sites.
