The first British Muslim to translate the Qur’an, however, was the novelist and vicar’s son Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall. He undertook a new translation (published in 1930) after observing that some of the earlier translations included ‘commentation offensive to Muslims and employed a style of language which Muslims at once recognise as unworthy’. Although his language may now seem almost artificially archaic, his translation keeps close to the original Arabic, and is still very popular among Arabs and Muslims.
