Rewriting the Koran

Middle East Transparent (see below) carried an interesting article essentially accusing the Wahabbi sect of Islam of rewriting the Koran. Here's an example of what the author means:

The Wahhabi Koran is notable in that, while Muslims believe that their sacred text was dictated by God and cannot be altered, the Saudi English version adds to the original so as to change its sense in a radical direction. For example, the opening chapter, or surah, is known as Fatiha, and is recited in Muslim daily prayer and (among non-Wahhabis) as a memorial to the dead. The four final lines of Fatiha read, in a normal rendition of the Arabic original (such as this translation by N.J. Dawood, published by Penguin Books): Guide us to the straight path, / The path of those whom You have favored, / Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, / Nor of those who have gone astray.

The Wahhabi Koran renders these lines: Guide us to the Straight Way. / The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). The Wahhabi Koran prints this translation alongside the Arabic text, which contains no reference to either Jews or Christians.

There is nothing to indicate to the uninformed reader that these interpolations, printed in parentheses, are absent from the Arabic. The reader encountering Islam for the first time, as well as the Muslim already indoctrinated in Wahhabism, is led to believe that the Koran denounces all Jews and Christians, which it does not.

This looks very much like the kind of "fundamentalist v. non-fundamentalist" debate among Christians as to what exactly the Bible says. The article essentially says that the Wahabbi translators have mixed in their own annotations with the original text and have made no effort to distinguish the two.

Unfortunately, the Wahabbis probably have it right, in that the condemnation of the Jews and the Christians was an understood thing among Muhammad's troops after he fled Mecca in the Hegira, the epochal event with which the Muslim Calendar begins. Quibbling about someone's annotations won't solve the central problem of what Islam really is.