Imam translates Qur’an into language that Africans can understand

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This article was published 23/03/2008 (6440 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DETROIT — Born into a devout Muslim family in west Africa, Imam Momodou Ceesay studied Arabic and the Quran at an early age. He learned quickly under the tutelage of a Gambian sheikh and graduated from Al Azhar in Egypt, considered the top university in the world for Islamic studies.

But it concerned him that millions of African Muslims were unable to understand the Quran because it was written in Arabic, a language foreign to many of them. So Ceesay, now a Southfield, Mich., resident, undertook what is believed to be the first complete translation of Islam’s holy book into Mandinka, a west African language.

Completed in 2006, the translation was approved by Islamic scholars last year. Now, Ceesay is raising money to make and distribute CD and cassette copies to Mandinka-speaking Muslims in Africa, the United States, France and other places where Africans have migrated.

“I want to make sure people have the correct information about the Quran and Islam, so they don’t get it from the TV screen,” Ceesay said recently after teaching an Islamic class at the Muslim Center in Detroit.

The translation project is a reflection of the growth of metro Detroit’s African immigrant Muslim community. There are now about a half-dozen mosques in southeastern Michigan with African immigrant congregations. About two-thirds of the students that Ceesay teach at the Muslim Center — a mosque founded by black American converts — were children of African immigrants.

Ceesay is part of that immigrant influx. He grew up in Gambia, taught at Azhar and then moved to New York City. Ceesay came to Michigan in 1995.

Today, he is an assistant imam at the Muslim Center, where he advises and counsels African Muslims. From Islamic naming ceremonies for newborns to marriages and funerals, he handles a wide range of duties.

Like many Muslims, Ceesay said he is tired of seeing negative images of Islam in recent years. “Islam has been portrayed in a very bad way, and it should not be like that.” But “complaining about is not going to do anything.”

So he spent six months at home translating Islam’s holy book, using previous works by Islamic and linguistic scholars as his guide.

He said he sees his translation as an outreach of his ministry: “If people understand Islam in the right manner, they will accept it and appreciate it.”

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services