7. One Translation, Two Faces: The Ambivalent Authority of the Official Qur’an Translation

Chapter Seven examines the reception of QT through an examination of a specific political scenario fraught with disputes and controversy in which QT played a significant role, namely the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. This chapter demonstrates how the renderings proposed by different editions of QT resulted in the formation of partisanship, which influenced the election outcome. This case study also shows how the state's Qur’an translation is read, and that it bears more than hermeneutical merits because state authority is also found in the translation.

Contributors

Fadhli Lukman

(author)

Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3338-8158

Fadhli Lukman is a faculty member at the Department of Qurʾānic Studies (Ilmu Al-Qur'an dan Tafsir) of Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He is also an associate researcher at Laboratorium Studi Qur'an-Hadis (LSQH). He completed his basic Islamic disciplines in Madrasah Sumatera Thawalib Parabek, continued his Bachelor's and Master's studies in Qurʾān and Tafsīr studies at Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, and then completed his Ph.D at the Department of Islamic Studies, Orientalisches Seminar, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in 2019. His work mainly deals with Qurʾānic hermeneutics and the history of tafsīr in Indonesia.