Presenting together here four different English translations of the Quran might do little to anticipate and meet criticisms that quotations presented elsewhere are "taken out of context". We do it anyway. In the Muslim view the word translation would not be appropriate to describe English-language renditions of the Quran or those in any language other than the "language of Muhammad and of god and of heaven," Arabic. As Muslims would have it, the Quran in these other languages can only be interpretations of the Quran. The central religious text in Islam, Muslims maintain that the Quran is eternal, and possibly uncreated and therefore itself divine; that it has always existed in heaven; that it was delivered in Arabic, exclusively and always privately, to Muhammad by Allah - الله (god) through the angel Gabri- جبريلel (Jibril), over a 23 year period beginning on 22 December 609 at the Cave of Hira near Mecca through Muhammad's death in 632. The truth differs dramatically from this narrative in many respects — the second most striking of which being that Muhammad may never have existed; there is no mention of Islam, the Quran or Muhammad for 60 years after his death by the Arabic conquerors conquering in his name nor by the cousins of the killed peoples anywhere over the vast swaths of Earth which the Arabs conquered; the first biography of Muhammad was set down 150 after his death — but even according to Muslim understanding the Quran can not be compared to the Biblical canon of the Jews or that of Christians, as the Quran, Muhammad informs all humankind, came to humankind through one human only, Muhammad himself ! Though Muslims maintain that they are pure monotheists — and indeed denying in any way the oneness of god, shirk شرك , is the one sin unpardonable by god, if the person dies unrepentant in that state of error — the circumstance of Muhammad being the sole human author, well ... transmitter, of the Quran, and the only witness that he received anything to transmit, together with other factors, his being upheld as the most excellent example of human contact, if he did it it is good and great, emulate it endlessly; the countless references in the Quran to Muhammad himself; accepting god's will and the only true and unadulterated faith means accepting Muhammad's supreme leadership and prophetship, all these circumstances combine to in fact make Muhammad a quasi-deity in the faith of Islam, however fanatically Muslims protest to the contrary. But these matters will be left to be dealt with elsewhere.

The Quran consists of 114 chapters (suras), divided into verses (ayahs). These installments of divine revelation, these chapters were not written down by Muhammad. Indeed there is argument as to whether he could write: an illiterate poet, a strange thing indeed. Neither were they written down in full by any of his followers during Muhammad's lifetime. These are bizarre circumstances when one considers the import for heaven and earth that Muhammad and his follows maintain attach to every syllable of these suras. Rather the Recitation, so the narrative goes, was remembered and written piecemeal by some of Muhammad's newly-literate followers on tablets, bones and date palm fronds. These followers came round to deciding that it would be a good idea to actually write these down into one collection, one book, only after 700 memorizers of the suras, hafizes, were killed at the Battle of Yamama later in 632, after Muhammad's death. So Muhammad's successor, the first caliph, Abu Bakr (who died in 634) appointed Zayd ibn Thabit to coordinate and oversee the collection and codification of the Quran from Quranic material: assorted parchments, palm leaves, stones, camel bones and the memories of men who knew it by heart. A number of scholars contend that the Quran in fact was compiled centuries after Muhammad died, in the service of Muslim war conquests and challenges thereto, but this too will be left for other writers to deal with. Critically for present purposes, if neither Muhammad nor his Quran were inspired by God, then the purported far-fetched story of compilation and codification of the standard version within a generation of his death, even if true, is of secondary moment.

The four translators whose translations of the Quran are presented