New Version Will Replace Pulled Koran

A translation of the Koran with several controversial footnotes and commentaries that offended some Jews will be permanently removed from Los Angeles public school libraries and replaced with a less objectionable version, according to an agreement reached Monday.

A panel of Islamic experts and other educators will review potential substitutes for the nearly 300 copies of the 1934 book “The Meaning of the Holy Quran,” which were donated last month by a local Islamic foundation to the Los Angeles Unified School District. School officials last week took the books from shelves pending Monday’s meeting with Muslim and Jewish leaders.

Dafer Dakhil, head of the Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation, which donated the books, agreed to their permanent withdrawal and said Monday that he did not mean to “hurt the feelings or cause discomfort to members of other faiths.”

The books triggered a debate about the role of various religious scriptures in public education and how best to explain ancient texts that may make disparaging remarks about other cultures or religions.

All sides praised Monday’s settlement and some participants suggested it was a sign that tensions may have cooled since a series of disputes between local Jewish and Muslim groups.

“In the interest of good faith and goodwill and being sensitive to people’s concerns we agreed that the books should not be used,” said Salam Al-Marayati, spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Dakhil started Monday’s closed-door meeting at district offices by apologizing for any offense he might have caused, according to participant Michael Hirschfeld, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation.

“His sincerity was very apparent,” Hirschfeld said. “He recognized it as a mistake and was interested in doing whatever possible to bridge differences.”

Dakhil, a fixture at regular district Board of Education meetings, donates space to the district at the foundation’s offices near USC and provides free workshops for teachers interested in learning more about Islamic culture, history and the Koran, which some Muslims prefer to be spelled Quran.

He declined to be interviewed in detail in person or by telephone. But in an e-mail response to questions posed by The Times, Dakhil said, “The purpose of our gift was [to] promote greater understanding of Islam and Muslims at a time when misconceptions and interest about Islam and [Muslims are] at a peak; and to provide educators and students an opportunity to use the Quran alongside the Bible and scriptures of other faiths.”

Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, in an interview after the meeting, pointed out that many religious books, including the Jewish Torah and the New Testament, have passages that are less than politically correct in references to other groups.

He and other Muslims at the meeting agreed to work with school officials to find another version of the Koran as soon as possible.

Rowena Lagrosa, L.A. Unified’s executive administrator of educational services, said the meeting reaffirmed the district’s good relationship with Dakhil’s foundation, but she acknowledged that the translation in question “did not go through the normal district review procedures.”

Shortly after the district distributed the books to middle and high schools two weeks ago, a history teacher complained about references that seemed to be anti-Jewish.

One of the objectionable footnotes, for example, said: “The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. But there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in their philosophy. Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy.”

Most Popular English Translation of Koran

“The Meaning of the Holy Quran” is the most popular English translation of Islam’s sacred scripture, say scholars. Ahmed Osman of Amana Publications in Beltsville, Md., said his company sells millions of copies each year throughout the world and has never before heard complaints about the book.

But he acknowledged that “a translation is an interpretation,” and that author Abdullah Yusef Ali brought his own perspective to the book.

According to Osman, Ali was a native of British colonial India who memorized the entire Koran in Arabic at age 8.

He became a highly regarded scholar known for his mastery of Islam, along with his knowledge of Christian and Jewish texts--and the English language.

Ali Asani, an Islamic scholar at Harvard University, said that Koranic commentaries often reflect “particular political goals,” and that Ali’s perspective might have been colored by his experience in colonial India when many Muslims felt they had to resist encroachment by other cultures.

Asani, in a telephone interview, also said that other translations better reflect more pluralistic elements in the Koran, which has many passages praising Jews and Christians as “the people of the book.”

The flap follows several months of tense relations between Southern California Jews and Muslims.

Those include the arrest of longtime Jewish Defense League’s leader Irv Rubin on charges that he planned to bomb the King Fahd mosque in Culver City.

And some Jewish leaders condemned Al-Marayati for his sarcastic statement before the perpetrators were identified that the Israeli government was just as likely to have blown up the World Trade Center as Muslims.

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Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.