Answer
Wa `alaykum as-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
1- As the Quran is Allah’s word, it cannot be substituted by any other translation. All translations are just human appreciated efforts to understand the meanings of the Quranic verses.
2- As for reciting for worship, it must be in Arabic, so every non-Arab Muslim is highly urged to learn how to recite it in Arabic.
In responding to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
The Quran, the Word of Allah, was revealed in Arabic. It is inimitable; as such, no translation can ever be a substitute for it. So the rewards of reading the Quran cannot be extended to reading a translation; any translation is only a human rendering of the meanings of the Qur’an as its author has understood it.
Therefore, I would urge you to learn to read the Quran in Arabic. Once you mobilize the will and are willing to take the steps by trusting Allah, you will succeed. Until then, you can always listen to the recitation of the Quran recorded by the famous reciters.
Here is a site which has published so many of them; you can access the recitation of the famous reciters here:
You can even learn if you practice reading after him as he teaches the children in Al-Mushaf Al-Mu’allim.
Having said this, I would also urge you to read any of the standard translations of the Quran such as those of Yusuf Ali, Muhammad Asad, Picktall, etc. But you must never stop at reading the translation, for it can never replace the Quran.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.