I respect Dr. Daniel Peterson. Years ago, I debated him at FreedomFest in Las Vegas on “Islam: Threat or Not?”:
In this article, Dr. Peterson criticizes some common translations of Qur’an 3:19 and 3:85, which say that only Muslims will go to Paradise, and offers softer wording that allows for non-Muslims to enter. This is akin to those explications of Islamic doctrine that purport to show that it’s all really peaceful, which only leads to the question of why so many Muslims misunderstand it so severely, and all in the same way. While there are indeed Muslims who don’t think that all non-Muslims will go to hell, Dr. Peterson has overlooked Qur’an 98:6: “Indeed, the unbelievers among the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures.” The “the unbelievers among the People of the Book” are those Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who don’t accept Muhammad and the Qur’an and become Muslims. So are there some non-Muslims who go to Paradise? Sure: the ones who become Muslims.
Dr. Peterson has also failed to consider this hadith, in which Muhammad says “none will enter Paradise but a Muslim soul, and you people, in comparison to the people who associate others in worship with Allah, are like a white hair on the skin of a black ox, or a black hair on the skin of a red ox” (Sahih Bukhari 81.117.6528). While a “Muslim soul” here also could be, as Peterson has it for those Qur’an passages, one who submits to Allah, Muhammad makes it clear that those who associate others in worship with Allah will not enter Paradise. Islam teaches that virtually every non-Muslim religious group associates others in worship with Allah.
So yes, what a difference a translation can make indeed. But we have to guard against wishful thinking that will foster complacency and lead us not to recognize the magnitude of the challenge we face.
“What a difference a little translation choice can make!,” by Dan Peterson, Patheos, September 11, 2019:
One of the courses that I’m teaching this term focuses on reading the Qur’an in English translation. We’re using M. A. S. Abdel Haleem’s version, in the Oxford World’s Classics series….
Translation can really matter, though.
I offer as an illustration a couple of passages that I’ve slightly modified from Abdel Haleem’s rendering:
Qur’an 3:19 : “True Religion, in God’s eyes, is Islam.”
Qur’an 3:85: “If anyone seeks a religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted from him: he will be one of the losers in the Hereafter.”
Now, I’ve seen more than a few translations of these verses that have read pretty much as I have them above. And, when they’re so rendered, some anti-Muslim polemicists use them to argue that Islam is intolerant, and that Muslims believe that non-Muslims will not be accepted with God but will be punished in the Hereafter, that only converting to Islam can save us from the wrath of God.
One can argue about such matters, of course, and some Muslims (particularly on the extreme) certainly do believe that all non-Muslims will go to Hell. But others don’t believe that. And my point is that these verses and others like them don’t say that all non-Muslims go to Hell.
The Arabic word islam, which occurs in both of the verses that I cite, simply means “submission” — presumably, in these contexts, “submission to God.” It is very dubious that the term had already come to be the proper name of a distinct religion (“Islam”) during the life of the Prophet Muhammad, while the Qur’an was still in the process of being revealed and long before it had been gathered together and “published.”
So M. A. S. Abdel Haleem is completely correct, in my view, to translate these passages as in fact he does:
Qur’an 3:19 : “True Religion, in God’s eyes, is islam [devotion to Him alone].”
Qur’an 3:85: “If anyone seeks a religion other than [islam] complete devotion to God, it will not be accepted from him: he will be one of the losers in the Hereafter.”
In fact, I myself might have rendered them more or less as follows:
Qur’an 3:19 : “True Religion, in God’s eyes, is submission [to His will].”
Qur’an 3:85: “If anyone seeks a religion other than submission [to God], it will not be accepted from him: he will be one of the losers in the Hereafter.”…